Future Proofing your Website Design

In the field of architecture, the purpose of art and design is to create a space that’s everlasting, or at least, long-lasting. In the words of English architect Christopher Wren, architecture always “aims for eternity.” Web design on the other hand can target the next couple of years at the most, that is until a new trend emerges. It is driven by changing screen resolutions, usage patterns, installed fonts on users’ devices and more.

All that is Changing

The transient state of web design is sparked by the advent of mobile browsing. Browsing on mobile devices is expected to outpace desktop browsing in the next 4-5 years.

Today, more and more businesses are asking for an iPad website or an iPhone website. Since the screen resolutions, screen sizes and other parameters are different for these mobile devices, design that works on your desktop may not work as well on tablet and mobile phones.

In the past, designers have seen such problems as subset of the main domain. Therefore, creating an entirely new design for a mobile device has become the usual approach taken by designers.

We are being flooded by all kinds of devices with browsing ability; there are tablets of different sizes and mobile phones with different functionalities. Creating a separate design for such plethora of devices out there isn’t the solution. Even if you do so for the current set of devices, what’s the guarantee that devices in the future would have similar set of design parameters?

Future proofing your web design

To cater to the ever burgeoning field of different devices with browsing capabilities, responsive web design is the future. In context of architecture, it is akin to ‘responsive architecture’ that architects have been working on around the globe. Responsive architecture, in essence, adapts to the movement of people in a space. There are on-going experiments with walls that bend and flex as people approach them, thus creating additional space.

While responsive architecture may be in the experimental stage, responsive web design Vancouver is a reality, courtesy Media Queries which is a part of CSS 3. Media Queries allows you to include instances in your design code which allows your website to change layout according to the device it is being opened in.

For example, you can create alternate layouts for different screen resolutions and widths, without having to create separate designs, thus optimizing the presentation of your website across a variety of displays.

Thus, essentially speaking, you future proof your website against different devices and device categories that may flood the market in the future.

Stella Richard - About Author:
Stella Richard is author of the article and currently working with Ivory Shore.Ivoryshore has invented new ways of making marketing more effective within Web Design Vancouver with a team creating finest strategies.

Article Source:
http://www.articleside.com/web-design-articles/future-proofing-your-website-design.htm

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