Responsive Web Design has developed over the past few years to become a device agnostic approach to delivering content to users. From a mobile browser on an iPhone all the way up to a HDTV, responsive websites are able to adjust their appearance based on screen dimensions. We can no longer design for a desktop screen with the number of devices and different screen sizes that are available today and also those that will come tomorrow.

Responsive web design changes the appearance of a website dynamically, depending on the screen size of the device being used. The technology uses breakpoints to determine how the layout of the website will appear: one design is used above and another below that breakpoint. The breakpoints are usually based on the width of the browser.

THREE KEY TECHNICAL FEATURES ARE THE HEART OF RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN

• Media queries and media query listeners
• A flexible grid-based layout that uses relative sizing
• Flexible images and media, through dynamic resizing or CSS

Responsive websites RESPONDS to their environment; It's all about size.

When it comes to the world of worldwide web, Size does matter. These days people are accessing internet from a variety of devices and thanks to the war between ios, android, windows and blackberry, plenty of screen sizes and resolutions are being used. An iPhone 5 with a 4" screen, an iphone 4 & 4S with a 3.5" screen, a Samsung Galaxy S4 that has a display of 5", Apple iPads with a 7.9" & 9.7" screens, Apple Macbook air with a 11.6" & 13.3" display sizes & Samsung Chromebook at 12.1", they all shows a website differently. If the design is not optimized using the responsive web design technique the user will not get the optimal viewing experience. If a website is coded using responsive web design the website will automatically resize for the device screen size it is being viewed on

Why use Responsive Design?You will have 2 Billion reasons by 2015.

A research firm called strategy analytics, announced on October 17,2012 that the world has seen the 1 Billionth smart phone installation. It took the industry a long 16 years to achieve that landmark but the interesting part is that the next Billion of the smart phone install base is set to be achieved in less than next 3 years. Apart from smartphones there are about 250 million tablet owners that are accessing the internet from their devices

All these people are essentially on the move while they are accessing the internet and they expect the experience to be as seamless as they would have on their desktops and laptops. A lot of important decisions are being taken by these people while on the move - They are looking for directions, booking tickets, researching what to shop and also actually buying through the devices. You surely don't want to give them a messy experience on your website where they have to zoom in and out to see various parts of it