Recently, many clients often ask what is responsive web design? What is the difference between responsive web design and general website?

Responsive web design is relatively new technology in website design that ensures users to have a better visual experience in all types of devices they are using. Within the past few years, various of different sizes of mobile devices and computer versions, visual effects have brought to a great attention to the market.

Do you often hear the word RWD? In fact, it is the abbreviation of the responsive web design or adaptive web design, responsive web design, and corresponding web design. It is a technical practice of web design, which can make the website work on different devices. For the website designers and the front-end engineers, it is different from the need to design different devices for various devices in the past. Using this design method will make it easier to maintain web pages.

Back in the early stage of development period, it must be disassembled to produce of making a computer version website and then making a mobile version website. If the website was developed without a complete reproduction, it would cause the administrator to do the content update twice later for the web page. Especially, back in the days, the website did not have a background management system and was entrusted to different design companies to make both versions website on the devices. Updating the data became an even more troublesome issue. It had to be adjusted for each version. If accidentally updated incorrectly, it would cause excessive customer complaints. If the website was no background and needed a multilingual version, changing the content of the website would waste and cost plenty of time.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) This concept was proposed by Ethan Marcotte, a famous foreign web designer, in 2010. Websites designed in RWD is using CSS3 Media queries, an extension to @media rules, and streaming scale-based grids and adaptively sized images to fit different sized devices, were promoted as a post-2012 Trends in web design in the future. The web pages use CSS to present in the percentages and flexibility in screen designs. Thence, GOOGLE announced the arrival of the mobile age (Mobilegeddon) in 2015; generally prioritizing mobile-friendly sites in its search results algorithms and making your site mobile-optimized by using responsive design is crucial.

Just like water can be contained in different containers, it adapts to the width of various mobile devices at different resolutions. It automatically changes the layout of web pages through percentages, so that different devices can browse the web normally and provide a good visual experience. Based on the above description, many websites have also begun to use RWD to design web pages. However, this design method is more complicated and requires more time to write and be adjusted.

早期開發響應式網頁都是以手機板為替代方案，必須透過程式判斷螢幕尺寸來轉向一般網站或是手機版，不過主網站與手機板是屬於不同網域，如果同時使用2個，勢必要花二倍時間與金錢管理維護，如果使用RWD自適應網站則可以避免這種困擾。