Responsive Websites

Author: Monica Peters, MoniGarr.com

She:kon Monica,

I’ve heard that my website must be updated to be responsive.  What does that even mean?  I thought my website already responds to visitors because it shows information to all visitors.  I want to sound like I know what I’m talking about when I tell my web designer that I’m not going to pay a million bucks to make my website responsive.

Nia:wen,

Responsive in Akwesasne

She:kon Responsive in Akwesasne,

Websites must be responsive in order to show content in the most appropriate format for desktop computers and mobile devices.  When we say a website is responsive, it usually means that the website’s images, font sizes, and layout change dynamically to fit the desktop screen, tiny mobile device screen, and all screen sizes in between.  It’s a very popular technique for website designers and they use HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to make a webpage responsive.  Designers typically create at least three main ‘styles’ for a responsive website, so that its content, size and layout will change for the most popular three to five screen sizes. 

Website graphics can be made more responsive using what is called a 9 grid technique that makes the graphic continue to look nice even while it resizes from very tiny screens to very large screens.  Website text content can be responsive when the designer sets the font sizes to be percentages instead of standard sizes.  Website layouts can be made responsive when each content section is defined in the style sheet using CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet) and made to move to the right, left, above, or below other content sections.

Web designers can also make a website responsive for the Mohawk language by changing the website contents based on the viewers’ default language or a manual button language change.   If you want to increase your web design skills and add responsive web design examples to your portfolio, the following resources will be most useful.  SitePoint.com, AListApart.com, and look for web design work online from Jenifer Tidwell and Robert Hoekman Jr.

If you have any questions or comments about computers and the Internet send them to [email protected] and I’ll do my best to answer them in future stories.