Responsive design is a hot topic these days, with many a debate surrounding it. What is responsive design? In it’s simplest form, picture this scenario. When you are at a restaurant with friends and you are all arguing over the name of the band who performed the obscure 80’s song playing overhead, it’s nice to be able to haul out your smartphone and open a site to find whatever you need to find to prove your point. If the site is easy to see and use, then it was probably designed to respond to the environment it is in, whether that is your smartphone or a 24-inch monitor. The site may possibly figure out the screen dimensions it is in and point you to a version of the site that fits your screen. Or perhaps it was built with automatically adjusting elements, like CSS “auto” widths for the page content. Or again perhaps it was designed to switch things up depending on your screen size – show a small logo here, remove non-essential text there, etc. More than likely, it’s a combination of all three! This is responsive design.

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