Responsive Design
It’s a new trend in current best practice in web design lately. Essentially, what it means is that the website is coded so that it automatically displays the best view of the site, no matter what size monitor you’re using, or what mobile device you’re on (even more important these days).
The New Look of TAVPhoto.com with Responsive Design
Thanks to the creative products and tools coded by the talented people over at StudioPress.com (affiliate link), I had a great time giving a new responsive redesign to my photography website this weekend.
I love the large format for the images on the home page. I love the big, wide open look and feel of the site, and I love that it will actually be useable on an iPhone (or any other mobile device or computer).
That’s Right! It’s Actually Useable on Mobile!
Take a look at this site on your smart phone.
- The navigation menu items are large and easily clickable.
- the photos look great
- the text is very easy to read
- people can actually, effectively browse my site on a mobile device (now said to be the most commonly used browsers who view the web)
No more having to try and spread the pages out with your fingers or double tapping to make the text bigger, then scrolling side to side to actually read the content. No more having to stretch the menus, making them bigger so you can actually go to the page you’re looking for.
And, it still retains the basic look and feel of the (full size) site. Just cool stuff.
Check It Out for Yourself…
To see this in action, take a look at the new photography site. Then do this…
- Look at it, full screen view on a desktop or laptop computer.
- After you’ve looked at, full screen, grab the lower right corner of your browser and drag it in. Watch how the site changes it’s size to accomodate the new viewings site. Pretty cool, huh?
- Now look at it on an iPad/tablet.
- Now look at it on your smart phone. Actually useable! click on the menu items – take a look around.
Possible NSFW warning: Just wanted to mention, depending on where you work, and if you’re at the office right now, I mostly photograph models, and while everyone on the site has clothes on, sometimes it’s not very much. But nothing critical is being exposed. 🙂
What If Your Site Isn’t Using Responsive Design?
Don’t panic! If you’re one of my clients I always develop your sites to function on a mobile device, even if it’s not responsive design. I don’t use flash (a real challenge for mobile). Basically your site still looks identical to the way it looks on a desktop computer monitor. It is just a tiny version, but still functional.
Also, if you’ve got a WordPress site there are plugins out there that can help to turn your site into a mobile-friendly version of your site so that your information is more useable. It doesn’t really look like your site anymore, but at least people can more easily navigate and read your information. A plugin for that, that usually get’s pretty good reviews would be WPTouch.
Onward and Upward
Admittedly this new feature has me pretty excited. (if you can’t tell) Looking forward to seeing what comes next! And thanks again to StudioPress for always making this stuff easier to keep up with!
