In the year 2013, it seems as everyone is welcoming responsive web design as the protector for the website development. In a way it is reasonable to consider it as a protector, as responsive web design is presently the only suitable method that deals with resolution of any device effectively and universally. Responsive web design tries to combine this disordered browser-based world plagued by the disintegration resulted from the competition of hardware business.
But, the responsive web design is not the only savior because of its list of disadvantages. Still, it is very much noticeable for the web design’s future, and therefore the conflict stimulates a war among web designing experts.
What’s good about it?
Usability
The major advantage that makes web designers to embrace responsive web design is its usability. Responsive web design flexibly adapts to different sizes of screen. All types of devices allow a responsive web design to run on them. Depending on the screen size, the website adjusts images and content, resized images and adjusts fonts to provide an outstanding experience to website users.
If a user is opening a site on a phone or on his computer, he can easily do that because of an exceptional usability of responsive web design.
Hassle-Free Maintenance
If a designer creates different versions of a website such as for tablets, mobiles, desktop etc. he can easily update all these versions for adopting change without any hassle. A designer can easily add a new web page to a site, edit content or correct any typos. This saves time and efforts for a designer.
A responsive web design can be maintained easily mainly because it is a single web design that caters a seamless browsing on different devices. In case if a web administrator needs to update the website, he can easily update it for a single platform. Moreover, he has to manage a single content’s set, which saves money and precious time of web administrator.
Increase in Sales
If users encounter an issue while opening a website on their devices, they can surely get irritated. On the other hand, when users are able to easily access a website from their devices, they do not switch to some other website serving the same services. An improved user experience boosts up sales and provides better conversion rates.
What’s bad about it?
Interruption for the Advertising Model
Not like any other element of web, advertisement is something that is beyond the control of a publisher. For a responsive web design, tweaking the ad size can break the agreement with the advertiser because ad placement is used to build a large number of advertisement dealings.
Disrupts Future-Driven Development
When users visit websites on their devices, they expect all the major features to be there including action button, category, navigation and search. Here, the problem arises, as the general approach of the responsive web design is to pile and squeeze them into tedious and long lists of functions.
Speed
Usually mobile users have less speed than desktop users. In case of responsive web design, any type of code cannot be removed. The needless HTML or Java script code also gets downloaded, which ultimately slows down the speed of website.
Incompatibility for Media Queries of CSS
Responsive web design relies mainly on media queries of CSS for compatibility on a large number of devices. On the other hand, CSS media queries and mobile devices are not compatible with one another.
Needs of Desktop and Mobile are Different
Resizing of the responsive web design is used to fit on different devices. This resizing does not employ major mobile features such as hardware limitations, gestures, geo-location etc. as desktop devices do not support these features.
