Designing a website is not an easy job because when you sit down to do it, there are many things that you need to keep in mind to make sure it is functional and convenient for all types of users; the ones who will access it through different kind of devices and from different kind of geographical areas.
Even though the latter does not always play a crucial role in it, the former is crucial to the design and functionality and has an entire type dedicated to it. There are two major types of web designs according to which web developers create new websites; responsive design and adaptive design.
The Responsive Web Design (RWD) is named for its’ ability to respond to the changes that occur in the loading and adjust to the kind of device that is being used to access the website. It analyses the size of the screen and tries to fit into it as much as the programming allows it to.
It also responds to the changing browser window size and makes it convenient for users to perform multitask by letting them use other tools without causing any disruption.
The Adaptive Web Design (AWD) on the other hand has multiple sizes of screen layouts built into it and the same mechanism as the responsive design which allows it to know the size of the screen of the device being used to access it.
Before a user can access a website that uses adaptive design, the website analyzes the screen size and the space available for it to use, and then the layout that will fit best according to it to provide the users utmost accuracy is chosen.
While the responsive design is developed to adjust size and shape according to the enlargement and the downsizing of a window, the adaptive design manages to retain screen space exactly as it is in the same process.
While the adaptive design is impossible in nature to be manipulated and manhandled because it is more convenient for the bigger screens and heavier devices, the responsive design is more suitable for the majority of users for the reason that we will now discuss.
In the last decade, a large number of the population has been using mobile devices to access the internet including search engines and web browsers so it makes more sense if you use the responsive design for your website if your regular visitors belong to that. Even Google recommends it more than the other.