Major changes in desing and creation of webpages are necessitated by the dramatic increase in cellphones as the way people are accessing websites. Most webpages were designed for viewing on desktop or laptop computers. Viewing older webpages via a tablet sort of works. But in the majority of cases, viewing such pages on cellphones isn’t very satisfactory.
The first reaction of webdesigners was ignoring the trend. “People should know better than to try to use tiny screens to view webpages.” Perhaps that’s true, but it’s irrelevant. People want automatic transmissions in their cars. And airconditioning. And an ever-increasing majority have decided to use cellphones to access the internet.
The next reaction was to make modifications to existing webpages to make them more cellphone friendly. Retrofitting existing webpages for cellphone viewing was successful in some cases, but not in most cases. And it took a lot of work for modest improvement.
The next step was called “Mobile First Design.” It turned out to be easier when designing new webpages, to design them to work on cellphones, and them make modifications so that the webpages would also work when viewed on larger screen devices. But as the sizes and shapes of cell phone screens continued to grow. And as more people started to also view webpages via large, wall mounted TV screens, the number of cases that had to be addressed increased, making that complicated. As does the fact that browsers (such as Chrome or Firefox) are designed to work differently than their tablet and computer counterparts.
So a new approach is developing. The languages used to create almost all webpages (HTML and CSS) have evolved to have many new capabilities. Which makes a different approach possible. It goes by different names — Responsive Design, Flexible Design, Fluid Design, etc. There are some differences among them, but all share a common idea — design the webpage and its content to automatically adjust to the size and shape of the screen that’s displaying the webpage. This looks very promising and I’m trying it out, but it’s comparatively new, and people are still developing ideas as to how best to implement the concepts for their projects.
It should be a huge help to those viewing webpages via cell phones, some help to those using tablets, and perhaps more atractivepages when viewed on computers. And better for those with vision proplem and have their computer read webpage to them.
I hope to soon finish testing some pages produced that way for you to try — and hopefully enjoy.