Most probably you have heard of people saying living in the digital world. What does it really mean especially for web designers and developers? It means that about 40% to 60% of your site’s traffic and visitors comes through mobile handsets. In fact, very soon with the time laptops and mobile devices will be considered as minority at web platform. How we are going to handle the architectural shift in user behaviour? Nowadays, we have moved beyond the t-dot and m-dot hacks and adaptive and responsive web designs rule these days which W3C depicted as an efficient and one web approach.
For web developers, it could depict that moving on one web approach assures that not only your website works according to the tablets and SmartPhones of this tech savvy world but also can be future proofed for the unanticipated screens of future. At present, there are three famous and prominent approaches of creating a website i.e. by following client side adaptive design tactic, server side adaptive design strategy or/and responsive design approach. One is not better or worse as compared to the other and each one of them has its own positives and negatives and the web professionals consider each one of them before picking for their next task.
Client Side Adaptive Design
The adaptive web designs that are build on the principles of responsive designs to deliver great user experiences are targeted at particular contexts and devices. Moreover, such designs make use of JavaScript to enrich sites with advanced customization and functionality attributes. There are majorly two kind of approaches to adaptive web designing, one where the adaptation happens on the client side in the user’s browser and the other where web server does the heavy lifting of investigating varied devices and downloading the apt template. One of the main positives of the adaptive template approach is the capability to reuse one set of JavaScript and HTML across diverse devices, simplify testing and change management. In client side approach, you don’t have to re-create your website from scratch. Rather you can construct on existing content and text along with delivering a mobile responsive layout.
Unlike responsive web designs, adaptive templates assure that the only desired sources are loaded by the client’s devices. Having a higher barrier to entry, web developers need to have a solid understanding and hold of JavaScript to make use of this approach. As the client side adaptations are like a protected layer on the top of the existing code base, you require to maintain them as a whole emerges.
Server Side Adaptive Design
The server side adaptive approach can be considered in a wide number of ways including custom user agent detection and server side plug-ins. Server side adaptive designs in general proffer specific templates for each devices letting for more customization options, keeping device detection logic on the server and enabling smaller mobile apps and web pages that load quicker and prompter. In addition, there are many server side plug-ins available for different eCommerce systems and content management systems like Magento.
This is true that many firms and organizations are still scuffling with the basics of responsive web designs and are not at all prepared with more sophisticated essences of adaptive web approach. In the long run, with the increasingly competitive mobile traffic, it is for sure that it will drive more and more firms to bang on the irks on all three strategies and pick out the best one that works best for their customers.
Responsive Web Design
It is amongst the most common one web approaches used by people across the world. This approach uses CSS media queries to edit and change the presentation of a website based on the varied sizes of the devices. The major benefit of this tactic is that web designers can use a single template for multiple devices and CSS to ascertain how content will be displayed on varied screen sizes. In addition, they can work with other technologies too they are already familiar with. Unlike to this, there are some shortcuts that could be helpful to a sound and efficient responsive web design. In fact, to go responsive, firms and businesses need to undertake a complete website revamp.
In addition, the numbers are quite large as responsive web designs cover all main devices. The user is using only one device but he has to wait for all page elements and resources to download before actually they can use it. Though with time, such designs and approaches are becoming like the de facto standards, but also building on the same hand new challenges for online businesses and organizations like how to optimize mobile performance, how to handle images and mobile efficiency, and oftentimes websites require to be re-construct from the scratch with a mobile first approach.
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