Why Your Site Needs Responsive Design

Thu, 09 May 2013 11:34:00 +1000

Here at Praxis Interactive, we have followed the rise and rise of responsive design very closely. Until early last year, it was little more than a curiosity, or the latest fad in design. Now, we believe it is a necessity for your business. In this blog post, we will discuss the reasons why.

What is responsive design?

Ethan Marcotte in 2012 (photo by hellogeri)

Responsive design, or responsive web design as it is officially called, was first coined by Boston-based web developer and designer Ethan Marcotte in May 2010, on the popular A List Apart web site. Essentially, it is the theory and practice of designing web sites in a device-agnostic fashion. This means that a web site using responsive design will automatically change it's layout for an optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices, including computers, tablets, and smartphones.

why is responsive design important?

Global traffic by device type (courtesy of Adobe Digital Marketing)

According to statistics, mobile web traffic currently makes up over 10% of global web traffic, and the number is increasing every day. Research from Gartner shows that this year, more people will use mobile devices to access the web than PCs. By as early as 2014, it is predicted that mobile internet usage will overtake traffic from traditional desktops. This means that your business can no longer afford to ignore the mobile web.

why use responsive design?

Before the advent of responsive design, web authors targeted the growing mobile web by typically producing two versions of their sites. The primary version would be aimed at PCs, and is what we call a "traditional site". Most sites on the web are still of this type. Working in parallel with the primary version, a secondary version of the site would often be created just for mobile phones. We've all seen these sites when we access the primary site on our smartphone browser, and are redirected to a site with an "m" prefix, which shows the mobile-only layout, for example: m.news.com.au.

The growth of tablets (courtesy of Adobe Digital Marketing)

For a while, this approach seemed to work well. However, the introduction of the iPad and the growing popularity of tablets created a problem. Here we had devices with a screen size that was not as small as a smartphone, and not as big as a PC monitor. Neither the mobile-only version or the traditional site were appropriate, and it was not feasible for web authors to produce separate versions for each new device.

The solution is responsive web design. By developing a site in a responsive fashion, a single version of a web site is created which automatically adjusts it's layout for optimal viewing on popular devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs.

will my site need responsive design?

In short, yes. The mobile web is here, right now. In fact, the change has come much more rapidly than predicted. Trends show that mobile web is overtaking desktop traffic right now, and will soon eclipse the traditional web. A recent article by .net magazine lists responsive web design as the number one web design trend for 2013. Within a year from now, the majority of popular sites will have switched to a responsive design to cater for the shift in web traffic. The question is, will your site be ready for the change, or left behind?

Welcome To Our Responsive Site

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:22:00 +1000

Well it's here at last, the new responsive Praxis Interactive web site! We've been working overtime putting the finishing touches on our new site and the content management system that drives it. You are now looking at a site running on our all new Praxis CMS, built upon the proven SilverStripe platform, and using the Skeleton responsive design boilerplate. Overall we have been very impressed indeed with how the platform performs as a content management system and as an application framework.

We've learned a lot over the past year, but one thing we know for certain is that SilverStripe is the best choice for delivering our projects. We are absolutely delighted with how it has performed and relieved that our initial taste of the platform was just as sweet as the main course. Praxis CMS combines SilverStripe and Skeleton together to create a powerful package for responsive web development.

Over the years, we've explored many other third-party content management systems and application frameworks for our sites, but each of them has fallen short of our expectations. SilverStripe is the exception: it is the diamond in the rough. We are delighted to now offer Praxis CMS to our valued clients, which builds upon the foundations of the SilverStripe platform. Skeleton was chosen as our responsive boilerplate as it's the most no-nonsense product we have found for responsive design. It provides the tools for making the site responsive, and then gets out of the way, which is perfect for our development process.

No system is flawless, and there is a learning curve for any firm who chooses to adopt a system that is not their own. That said, SilverStripe to us is one of the most logical and thoughtfully designed systems we've ever used. You may have heard the phrase "everything just works" when talking about a certain brand of personal computers, phones and tablets; that's precisely how we consider this system. With only the occasional minor exception, "everything just works". We hope we can continue to deliver this experience with our Praxis CMS projects.

Rebuilding our own responsive site on the platform has allowed us to further our knowledge on the finer details of SilverStripe development, and unlike many competing products, it's been great fun and a really positive experience. Already we have a developed a core group of responsive modules and widgets for the platform which we can offer to clients, such as the blog you are using right now.