Responsive Web Design Essay

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Assessed Component 2

Introduction

In this assignment I am going to explain the definition of responsive web design, process of graceful/gradual degradation and progressive enhancement when applied to responsive web design. I am also going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a process of graceful/gradual degradation compared with the process of progressive enhancement when designing a web site.

Main Body

• Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is a layout and styling technique that adjusts the layout and viewing skill across devices, from mobile phones to large desktop monitors.
For example, a responsive website may show a mobile device style top menu with a single column design when seen with a smart phone device, but tabs or global navigation buttons and a 2-column design when viewed with a tablet, and a 3-column design when viewed on a laptop or desktop monitor. All three electronic devices can see the same content; the server "responds" to the device with a design optimized for viewing on that specific device.
Responsive designs are gradually common due to the important increase of people using tablets and mobile phones to view websites and do some researching. There are numerous ways to realize responsive web design. One way is to animatedly find the user's platform like an iPad, iPod or an iPhone and load exact HTML and CSS for the matching device. Another way is to use media queries, which repeatedly load special CSS styles varying on the size of the browser window.

A responsive website has always a three main components; they are Flexible layouts, Media queries and Flexible media. The first component, Flexible layouts, indicates that the design of the website is developed usi...

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