A Quick Look at Responsive and Adaptive Web Design

The days when a family relied solely on a single computer to access the internet are long gone. You had to wait your turn if you wanted to go shopping, communicate in chat rooms, or just browse for information. Today, things are very different.

Tablets, smartphones, and laptops come in a variety of sizes, processing capabilities, and screen layouts. It’s a task in and of itself to adapt your website to accommodate every screen.

You must pick between adaptive and responsive web design if you want to provide your users with the finest possible experience.

What is the Significance of This?

To put it another way, your website must appropriately suit people’s displays. On a 20-inch desktop display, it can’t possibly look the same as it does on a 6-inch iPhone screen. The majority of the material will be omitted or distorted. Additionally, the slow loading times and lack of usefulness would be aggravating.

The following article discusses the distinctions between adaptable and responsive web design, as well as its benefits and drawbacks, as well as some other considerations.

A Few Words

The severity of the benefits and drawbacks of these two design approaches is largely determined by your resources, including money, time, and staff skill sets.

Let’s imagine you’re based in New York, for example. You have a substantial budget, but your developers are already overworked. It may be more convenient to hire a local web design firm and have them go all out with your adaptive design. If time and resources are limited, however, a responsive strategy may be preferable.

Furthermore, you may have noticed that, according to your statistics, only tablets, phones, and laptops are being used to access your site. As a result, only three configurations are required for adaptive design. If, on the other hand, people use a variety of devices at the same time, you should invest in responsive web design.

Adaptive Design in a Nutshell

Let’s start with adaptive web design (also known as AWD). AWD now detects the screen size of the device that is being used to access a website. It works by having breakpoints that break, expand, and contract in response to the detected device. Its main feature is that it is built on pre-made layouts.

Usually, the following width layouts are used:

• 320px
• 480px
• 760px
• 960px
• 1200px
• 1600px

Because of these layouts, your items will appear differently on each device. The screen sizes listed above are the most prevalent in general, so you’ll most likely cover all of your bases.

Quickly Explained Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design, or RWD, adapts to the user’s needs. Instead of having several layouts for different devices, you have the same site for all of them. The site, on the other hand, will take a flexible approach, remaining fluid and adjusting the size and arrangement of its elements depending on the device.

In reality, this implies that a three-column layout can be automatically reduced to two columns to accommodate the device screen. The content and design are always the same.

The Benefits of Adaptive Design

The core pros of adaptive design are:

• Greater control over layouts (and quality content)
• Sometimes you don’t need that many layouts in the first place
• Websites load much faster

One of the best features of AWD is that the website loads rapidly once a designer has created some predefined templates. They just send the code required for a certain screen size, and unlike responsive designs, they don’t need to calculate or alter nearly as much.

These similar layouts ensure that the developer knows exactly how a website will appear on the devices for which it is being developed. This also allows content creators and designers to customize material for a certain device (like pushing more smartphone-centric content on layouts dedicated to phones).

Check your metrics as well. You won’t need to create a tablet-specific layout if you’ve found that your target audience solely utilizes computers and iPhones.

Disadvantages of AWD

However, there are some issues that can spring up, like:

• Uncommon screen sizes can be trouble
• Need to build layouts for multiple devices

If your statistics show that your audience uses a variety of devices, you’ll need to accommodate all of them. Creating various layouts can be time-consuming for your designer. You limit your audience by limiting certain layouts.

Even if you don’t already have any tablet users, failing to design a layout for them is a risk because you’ll be excluding a segment of your audience.

Finally, even if you put in all that time and work into the six popular layouts, you might not be able to give the optimal experience for users who use devices with unusual screen sizes.

The Pros Responsive Design

There are several advantages to responsive design:

• Accommodates any screen size, even uncommon
• More mobile-friendly (better SEO) ones
• Easier to create

It may be easier for developers to create a website that uses responsive design. Instead of creating many layouts from the ground up, a designer focuses on just one. He or she will focus solely on upgrading and developing it, rather than having to deal with various layouts.

Furthermore, because it’s responsive, you won’t have to worry about it being utterly unresponsive if a new screen type appears. With a few little changes to the code, you’ll be ready to go.

Finally, Google’s algorithms reward responsive websites with higher results because they are considered more mobile-friendly.

The Cons of RWD

However, responsive design can also be difficult because:

• Can be slow to load
• Less control over layouts

Due to the additional coding, these websites may take a little longer to load on some devices. The intensity of these slowed loading times is determined by the user’s device and the website’s complexity.

Furthermore, responding to any device can be both a blessing and a curse. Because you can’t test every possible screen size, some users may have a poor experience. This also means that websites like these may require more frequent coding modifications in the long run.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that everything you do in terms of web design should be suited to the needs of your target audience. It doesn’t matter whether you give them the correct information if they can’t see it.

People are unlikely to make a purchase, read your material, or even contact you if they have to work hard to do so. You’ll provide visitors a fantastic experience regardless of which device they’re using if you stick to adaptive or responsive web design.