Responsive web design vs. adaptive web design

Web design has changed for good says the statistics mentioned below:

• Mobile Phone penetration worldwide is at 48.9%

• Mobile share of organic search engine visits in the US alone is 31%

• Use of mobile devices for product search is at 34%

• ecommerce over the mobile device in the US alone is at $83.93 billion.

[Image Courtesy : www.statista.com]

With statistics like these and the fact that this year, 2015 is the year that the number of mobile internet users become higher than the internet users from any other platform; the websites being developed can simply not afford to ignore this trend.

Thus now more number of people are opting for a website design that caters to the desktop pc as well as the mobile devices. At the moment there are three options that are quite popular:

• Responsive Design

• Client Side Adaptive

• Server Side Adaptive

Responsive Design:

Responsive web design is by far the most popular website design used these days. The main characteristics of responsive website design are:

• It makes use of CSS media queries

• The presentation of the website is modified based on the real size of the device.

• It makes use of the highly popular HTML and CSS web technologies.

• Offers reduced work pressure, several simple tool kits like Bootstrap and Foundation.

• However with responsive design there are few limitations on what features you include in the website as compared to a website that is being designed for the desktop pc.

Client Side Adaptive Web Design:

The main principal behind client side adaptive web design is similar to that of responsive web design. The main characteristics are:

• JavaScript is used extensively to improve user experience.

• This design has the ability deliver Retina display quality and standard definition display to the other lower quality displays.

• This type of approach does require to build the website from the beginning. Instead an existing website can easily converted to be made viewable on multiple platforms.

Server Side Adaptive Web-Design:

The characteristics of server side web design are:

• A different website template is required to cater to each devices.

• This helps in the sense that a greater level of customization is possible.

• This help maintain the logic on the server itself.

• This also helps keep the pages small

The verdict:

There are several options available to the average website designer when creating a website that is viewable on multiple platforms, mainly the desktop and mobile devices. However the most of the website designers prefer to use the responsive website design due to various reasons.

At Alakmalak too, the responsive website design is more popular. Having developed over 2000 website projects they do have a great deal of experience already.

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