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Our thoughts about responsive web design & development

Our thoughts about responsive web design & development

“Rather than tailoring disconnected designs to each of an ever-increasing number of web devices, we can treat them as facets of the same experience. We can design for an ideal viewing experience, but embed standards-based technologies into our designs to make them not only more flexible, but more adaptive to the media that renders them.“ Ethan Marcotte

The Internet over the past couple years has met a large number of updates, in turn we have seen a significant amount of innovative techniques across our design & marketing industry.

Responsive Web Design Technique

We believe “responsive web design” is one of many techniques that crowded the web atmosphere. A really important initiative any business should consider today.

Author & Web Designer Ethan Marcotte best describes this new technique in his A List Apart book – Responsive Web Design.

Basically, this new responsive technique allow us to design & build websites that are flexible and respond to any mobile device. We can see this as a great benefit for many websites. This allows the users to interact with the most important information while they browse your site on a mobile device.

Ordinary websites & usability issues

Let's say Bob has wants to read the “sports” section from his favourite news channel each morning. While Bob is on the go, he pulls out his new phone and opens his favourite news feed website. Unfortunately many websites today are not built for mobile friendly devices, so our friend Bob encounters a set of obstacles and usability issues that makes it hard for hime to read. Let’s take a look:

non responsive website issues

  • Issue #1 - the site starts to load up and takes more than 2 minutes to fully load all the articles, images & possibly annoying advertisements.
  • Issue #2 - as you try to view the website content, you realize you can’t see the content properly due to how small the text is.
  • Issue #3 - you end up using two hands to use the zoom functionality of your phone to see the text larger.
  • Issue #4 - Oh and if you have zoomed to a certain area some of the text you try to read will be completely cutoff.


Ordinary Mobile Solution

Building a completely different mobile version of your website has been the only solution companies in the past had to make. The mobile users get redirected to a “mobile.newspaper.com” domain, making that their alternative solution. But this method comes tied with a several issues, one of them is maintaining two completely different websites. This is a very costly solution, due to the resources & time it consumes to keep updated.


Responsive web design is our new hero!

What if we could have the same domain website respond to our device’s dimensions & orientation? Responsive web lets you do this.  It responds to the device dimension and adapts the content smoothly so that it displays the most important information.

Responsive web design uses Flexible Grids, an excellent use of CSS3 media queries, & other server-side techniques to deliver lighter files & images on your mobile device. Making this an effective solution to deliver key information. On the illustration below we can see how great the experience is when you browse a “responsive website”.

Responsive website solution

  • The site loads faster & optimizes the limited bandwidth from your phone to display key information.
  • The text is very clear and easy to read!
  • Using just one hand & perhaps a single finger you can browse through the entire set of articles.
  • All the information is complete and visible with no major effort.


Think Responsive today!

Metallics is a Derbyshire based firm that designs & builds responsive websites. We believe this technique is the best way to make your website prepare for success. With the increasing amount of traffic coming from mobile devices, we can assure your business can take advantage of a larger audience and effectively communicate your service or product.

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