10 Key differences between adaptive and responsive web design
Author
dara
Date
For most of us, it’s hard to imagine a time when our smartphones and tablets didn’t exist. But for many people around the world, that time was only 10 years ago. Before then, the Internet was accessed through desktop computers and laptops — and the web pages you visited were designed for those devices.
Since then, we’ve seen an explosion in mobile usage, with more than half of all web traffic coming from smartphones or tablets. So now it’s important to build websites that can adapt to your user’s device and make sure they’re always getting the optimal experience no matter where they are or what they’re doing on their device.
That’s where adaptive (or responsive) web design comes in.
What is adaptive web design?
Adaptive web design is built with one goal in mind: delivering a great experience regardless of how large or small a device is used to access it. It takes into account everything from screen size to browser width in order to serve up content that looks good no matter where you are or how big your screen is!
Adaptive web design is a technique for designing sites that work on different devices and screen sizes. This type of design is ideal for websites that need to be viewed on multiple devices, such as an office website that needs to be viewable on both a desktop computer and a smartphone. Adaptive design uses fluid grids and flexible images, which means that the layout will adjust based on the screen size of whatever device you’re using to look at it.
Adaptive web design is a bit like a car that can change its shape and size depending on the road. It’s designed to work well with your device, whatever it may be.
What is responsive web design?
Responsive web design is more like a car that can change its shape and size depending on the road, but it doesn’t care if you’re in an SUV or a Mini Cooper. It’s designed to work well with all devices, no matter what they are.
Responsive web design is a technique for designing sites that work on all devices by using breakpoints. This type of design is ideal for websites where no particular device or screen size is more important than any other—for example, if your site doesn’t need to be viewed in an office environment, but rather just needs to look good no matter how small or large the screen size is.
Responsive designs use media queries to control what happens when certain conditions are met — for example, if the width of the browser window becomes too narrow (under 600px), then content will wrap onto a new line; otherwise, it stays centered vertically within its container element (such as a div).
What’s the difference between adaptive and responsive web design?
Adaptive web design is a methodology that uses a variety of media queries to adapt the layout and presentation of content according to the screen size, device orientation and resolution. It is most commonly used for mobile devices, but can also be applied to other devices.
Responsive web design (RWD) is a combination of fluid grid-based layouts, flexible images, and media queries. It uses CSS3 Media Queries to serve up different CSS stylesheets based on various browser window sizes such as tablets or desktop screens.
Below we’ve outlined 10 key differences between these two approaches to web design:
1. Adaptive web design is built from the ground up, whereas responsive web design is an add-on to existing websites.
2. Adaptive Design requires a lot more time to build than responsive design does, since it involves creating a single application that can run on all devices.
3. Responsive design builds on top of existing applications and makes them more efficient for mobile devices.
4. Adaptive Design’s goal is to create an application which works well across all devices
5. Responsive designs separate content into multiple sections which work better on different devices
6. Adaptive Design focuses on making sure that the user has access to the same content wherever they are
7. Responsive designs focus on providing different content depending on what device someone is using at any given time (e.g., desktop vs laptop vs tablet vs phone).
8. Adaptive Design requires more technical knowledge than responsive design does
9. For responsive design – designers have less work because they have to create a single layout for the page.
10. For adaptive design – designers have to do more work because they have to create six different versions of the website to handle different screen sizes.
Adaptive and responsive web design – what to choose?
Adaptive web design is often used by large companies with multiple teams working on websites. With this type of design, there’s one master template that’s used for all devices, and it’s up to each team to make the necessary adjustments for different devices. This means that each team has to maintain their own codebase, which can be difficult if you’re trying to keep track of multiple codebases across many different teams. It also means that you have less control over how your site looks on different devices because you’re not writing the code yourself.
Responsive web design is more popular with small businesses who don’t have a lot of resources and need something more simple than adaptive web design can provide. With responsive design, you create a single codebase for your website that works for all devices—no matter how big or small those devices are — but still makes sure that your site looks good on each device (because it’s designed specifically for them). You can also update your site by adding new features without having to worry about how it will affect how your site looks on different devices
