Casestudy 2, mobile vs responsive

When creating a website it is important to consider how a website will look on a mobile device. There are two primary ways of creating a website for mobile and these methods are responsive websites and mobile friendly websites. Both these methods have advantages and disadvantages.

A responsive website will change its layout depending on the size of the browser window. For example a website might have four columns when viewing at full size but when you shrink the browser window it it may then change layout to having three columns, then two columns and then eventually one column. Websites such as the BBC use this method but this involves having to decide how you want a website to look at many different sizes and this means if you want a very bespoke website this will require a lot of work.

The other method is having a mobile friendly version of a website. This involves deciding how you want the website to look on mobile and automatically directing the user to the mobile version when viewed on a mobile device. This is my preferred method primarily because it is simpler and I feel design can be compromised when designing for many different size windows. For instance, the Faside Estate sets the viewport (display size) to 300 pixels and is designed according.