Tips and tricks for designing for all screen sizes

Designing a website might not be a difficult or tricky thing to do, especially if you have the right set of skills. However, creating a website for different screen sizes and resolutions can be a terrible thing to do. With no doubts, the era of designing web pages for a single screen size has come to an end. In recent times, science and technology have improved drastically, and this has forced web designers to reconsider how different screen sizes will influence how their designs are displayed.

A standard method that most web designers adapt to cater for different screen sizes is the Responsive Web Design (RWD) method.

What is responsive web design RWD?

Responsive Web Design (RWD), is a web designing method that allows designs and codes written by designers to respond to the screen sizes of different devices. With the RWD, internet users get the finest viewing experience when they access websites on their devices, regardless of their screen resolution or size. This means that you’ll still get the best viewing experience whether you are using an android device with a 4-inch screen, a 15-inch laptop or a 40-inch TV display.

While designing, several methods can be employed to get the desired result. Flexible images, fluid grids, and CSS styling are methods used by some of the best websites to alter the website’s design and render it by the size of the screen of a device. For web designers, flawlessly tailoring the UI and UX of a website design for several platforms is an essential and crucial object.

Here are a few tips to adopt when designing for different screen sizes:

Try at least 3 layout

Nowadays, with improvements in technology, several devices can be used to access the internet. As a web designer, you must put this into consideration while designing. A proper RWD must have a minimum of 3 different layouts. This will cater for the diversity in the choice of browsers that internet user accesses the internet with. These layouts are:

• Small: most web pages usually displayed on most mobile devices in this layout. This layout is below 600px.
• Medium: most of the web contents you view on most tablets, notepads or some big phones are in this layout. This layout is between 600px and 900px.
• Large: most of the contents you view on most computers and PCs are in this layout. This layout is above 900px.

The same text and graphical content should be included in each layout. Also, each layout should be tailored to display these contents based on the device of the user.

Don’t design for a particular device

As a web designer, your design should satisfy all users, regardless of their device. Do not make the mistake of designing for a specific device or a particular screen size. Instead, you should focus on how the layout and contents of a web page will be displayed on a desktop and how it will adapt to changes in resolution or screen size when viewed on other devices.

User experience is important

Before an RWD can be said to be a good one, the user experience must be considered. A proper RWD must be much more than just adapting a desktop site for other devices. The experience that users get while viewing desktop sites on their mobile devices should be of great importance. Also, you must consider whether or not an internet user gets all the content they require while using a mobile device.

Use flexible images

Flexible images are quite crucial for a good RWD. While designing, you need to consider how images will scale when viewed on different devices.

Consider navigation

The ease with which a user can navigate through web contents, especially while using a mobile device is an essential factor to consider while designing. There are several methods; they are available for collating large contents or menus. The choice of collation method used should be based on how easy it will be for users to navigate through contents of a web page. Some of the several techniques for collating include the simple drop-down selection, the Hamburger style menu, horizontal tabs or expand/collapse fields.

Gestures

Gestures are significant features that allow users to execute some action on their devices efficiently. Also, it improves the level of interaction between the user and the contents of the webpage. For example, users with mobile phones or tablets can easily zoom-in or zoom-out by pinching the screen.

While designing, you must consider how complex desktop designs can be easily adapted to intuitive UI for small devices. The flexibility of your design is essential as it determines how excellent user experience will be across different platforms or devices.

Simplicity

This is very important, especially for mobile users. The user experience on mobile devices is more focused on the limited amount of space. So, your layout needs to be straightforward so that mobile users can easily navigate through the contents of the website. Also, this will help them to get the meaningful message you are trying to pass across and even to get the full idea of what the site is all about. Furthermore, the primary purpose or goal of a page should be clear. For example, if the primary purpose of a page is to get users to click on a particular link, take extra care in making sure that the connection is clear, visible and can be easily accessed.

Conclusion

As earlier said, the era of designing web pages for a single screen size has come to an end. Hence, it is vital for websites to be accessible across all platforms. Creating web pages to adapt to all screen sizes is the only way this can be done. Nowadays, it is much easier for users to access websites through their mobile devices rather than using their computers. So making sure that users get great satisfaction from browsing with the device of their choice is quite crucial for web designers.