Responsive Web Layouts for Mobile Screens: Intro, Tips and Examples

Designers have it tougher now than before. We not only have to design for stationary devices, but also mobile devices like the tablet and smartphones, and since we are talking about a lot of different screen sizes and resolutions here, it’s a huge task to shoulder. In light of this, responsive web design could be the best solution. It offers more than just a simple mobile template; instead, your entire site layout is designed to be flexible enough to fit into any possible screen resolution. With such a fluid design scheme there are obvious benefits and drawbacks. How Responsive Design Works When I use the word “responsive” in terms of web design I mean that the entire layout responds based on the user’s screen resolution. Responsive design is all about creating a homogeneous experience regardless of the browser or device screen size. Why Design for Mobile? It has become evident that more users are going mobile, and not just for on-the-go web browsing either. (Image Source: bradfrostweb)

A Simple Device Diagram for Responsive Design Planning Updated for 2015! Check out Analytics-driven responsive web design planning At Metal Toad we're big fans of responsive design, but a common snag in the responsive planning process comes when choosing what device widths to design to. Just yesterday we had a big internal debate over what the best widths to design to are for 3 layout sites, 4 layout sites, etc. There are an ever-increasing number of devices with different screen resolutions to take into account with a responsive design, so we put together a simple but handy diagram that lists the most common device widths as of the present, along with overlays for potential device width ranges. The Diagram Here's the result! A couple of things to note: As the labeling indicates, the top of the diagram is portrait orientations and the bottom is landscape orientations for devices. Our Suggested Layouts 3 Layouts Design Targets: Layout 1: iPhone (320/640px) in Portrait is a good candidate for the PSDs. 4 Layouts 6 Layouts! Go big or go home, right?

8 Ways to Add a Responsive Navigation Menu on Your Site By Jacob Gube There are plenty of techniques for implementing responsive navigation menus on your site. One of your options: Build your menu from scratch. There are many tutorials on the Web for that if you need to learn how. But some of us may just be interested in getting the task done as quickly and as painlessly as possible. In this post, I’ll discuss a few excellent open source projects for building responsive navigation menus. There are many options out there, so for convenience, I narrowed it down to just 8. At the end of the post, you’ll find a summary table that has links to the official site, demos, usage guide, and official open source repository for each project I’ll talk about. 1. This responsive navigation menu system is lightweight — less than 1KB when optimized. 2. Bootstrap has two components for building responsive menus. 3. menu-aim This jQuery plugin will allow you to make responsive mega-dropdown menus modeled after Amazon.com’s fast and responsive menus. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.