A responsive website is one which works across all screens – desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile.
The essence of responsive web design (RWD) is fluidity. The idea is not to fit the site exactly to specific mobile devices, but to ensure that it shrinks and adapts to fit any device, altering the layout as necessary.
The three standards of RWD are tablet landscape, tablet portrait and mobile portrait, where it is assumed that tablet portrait occupies broadly the same band as mobile landscape. There are a wide variety of devices in each of these categories with differing dimensions. What this means in practise is that we will specify responsive styling in broad bands to cover all eventualities as gracefully as possible.
Typically we will step between bands at the values given below, though we regularly review optimum widths based on popular current devices.
Tablet landscape: 770 - up to desktop width
Tablet portrait/Mobile landscape: 480 - 770
Mobile portrait: 320-480
This approach should ensure a comfortable browsing experience for all users, regardless of device.
