Responsive Design

Introduction 

Responsive design is no longer an option-it is simply a requirement. Looking at the analytic on the right, it is important to remember that the number of those on phones will go up as the desktops go down. So much of the world is done on cellphones or tablets, as opposed to just being computer only with maybe someone once in a blue moon using the internet on their flip phone. In this day and age, we need to think for those people on the phone and adjust our websites to fit the criteria. Here, I will be going over a few tips in order to maximize your design possibilities.

Number of Characters Per Line

Seeing a long line of text on a computer screen is taunting enough, but many people keep the line length and instead lower the font size. To that I say: don't. Making your text a bit smaller is fine-sometimes you need that. But with a desktop, a good number per line is about 70. On a phone you are gonna lower that down to about a 40.

Remove Excessive Visuals

Having clutter is one of the biggest problems with mobile design as a whole. With Youtube-you notice that their design gets progressively smaller and removes less important things like sidebars or the extra column. It is pretty much the basis of the following rules as well. 

Scale Columns

Sometimes  using two columns isn't a good thing. It leads to a lot of extra space and makes it so you can't read either one. It is a good practice to shrink it down as it will create a cleaner website. 

Resize Text

This sounds like a given, but it is important! Text is most likely going to be one of the more important parts of your website, unless you run a photo-only website. But text can take up a lot of room. While on desktops, text has the right to be larger as you are farther away from the computer comparative to the phone and have more space to work with. It is one of the simple rules, but also one of the most helpful. 

Switch Up The Menu

Menus are a backbone of a website. It is the dogma where all the information from the website is sent, and if it looks bad, you're entire site will look bad. This makes it so too much of your viewer's attention won't be on something that needs their attention!

Focus On The Important Stuff

Why did your make your website, or what does it do? Well, focus on that. Don't show up a bunch of the extra 'fluff' you can afford on a computer, do what your website is supposed to at it's core. Looking at the entire basis of the website can be one of the most helpful things you can do when deciding how to break all of this down.