Anyone who has anything to do with web design will no doubt already have heard of, or even used, responsive web design.
Responsive web design means that when a webpage is opened on a mobile device or tablet, the page is displayed perfectly, with everything appearing as it does in a PC browser. This does away with cramped mobile websites, with tiny writing and constant scrolling, which is very difficult to navigate.
As we’re living in the connected age, where there are more smartphones in the world than toothbrushes and PC sales are in a steep decline due to tablets, it’s easy to work out why being responsive is a vital part of a modern website.
How does it work?
To begin with, responsive designs auto-scale to fit the destination device perfectly, without altering the content of the site. This is done automatically and doesn’t require any user intervention to make it work properly.
The technology works by using @media queries in order to discover the size of the target device, then present a layout based on that. It’s a reasonably new technology but has been around since about 2011.
Do I need special coding knowledge?
Not necessarily, one of the beauties of having a Joomla website is the use of templates or themes, which have been pre-coded and optimised so that you simply install and go. There are already a large number of responsive templates available in the Joomla templates library, so it should be relatively simple to find one that suits.
However, if you have a simple site, then by all means install a responsive design template, but beware as Joomla sites that have a lot of extensions are likely to cause a problem when it comes to installation.
Site structure
For the most part, it’s likely to be images and video that gives a problem in some templates and so it’s worth looking at your site structure in order to decide how you can simplify it.
This isn’t a bad exercise to undertake anyway, as problems that you previously had been aware of will inevitably present themselves when undergoing a full site audit.
The lack of support so far for Joomla extensions and responsive web design is due simply to the newness of the technology, so it shouldn’t be too long before the Joomla community respond and begin to publish compatible extensions and plugins.
In the meantime however, if you come across this problem, then it’s wise to either abandon the project for now, or give your site a good overhaul in order to make it compatible.
Why should I bother?
Well, those who don’t have a responsive website are more likely to find themselves trailing the opposition, as so many people now access the net via a smartphone or tablet. This means that you have to offset the potential cost in terms of time and money in order to decide whether it’s worth it right now.
Researching rival sites will help you with that, if all of your competitors already have responsive sites, then it’s time to act. Likewise, if none of your competitors do, then it’s worth asking yourself if you will benefit significantly from getting a head start.
The fact is, at some point you are going to have to adapt to modern technologies so it’s worth getting ahead of the game, in order to stay that way.
What do we offer?
The next DPCalendar version will offer some cool configuration options to optimize your calendar and events for all kind of devices. Of course every view will be repsonsive using the state of the art framework bootstrap.