The Takara Rock’N Flower was a quintessential ’80s toy. This whimsical plastic flower intuitively responded to music by waving and dancing. Decades later, the idea of the flower lives on in web design. VMC solutions architect Keith Prunella said that a custom solution in SharePoint using responsive web design allows websites to be viewed by mobile devices from the start of development.
Though mobile accessibility and compatibility are at the forefront of people’s minds when they build websites, they sometimes don’t implement mobile versions of their site until after subsequent releases. This method is problematic because they have to go back and significantly adapt their existing site to support mobile devices — this means more development.
Responsive web design is a custom solution pliable to SharePoint that spares you the headache. Mobility is integrated and constructed within the site from the beginning. With responsive design, the website detects the resolution, platform, and orientation of your device and automatically adapts to the screen, minimizing the need to pan or scroll. For instance, when viewing a website with responsive design on a tablet device, the site reprioritizes itself; some pictures shrink, a sidebar reconfigures into a text-based list, and other items shift down. On a smart phone, the design will adapt and condense even more.
I believe responsive design integration is the best way to develop a website because, with all the various mobile devices on the market, we have to think about mobility first. An added benefit is that developing responsive design is fairly quick so it’s a relatively inexpensive process and you don’t have to worry about it disrupting existing processes or workflows.
Taking time to integrate mobile compatibility into your website at the start will spare you additional development down the road. How can responsive design within SharePoint help your website shimmy smoothly across all platforms?
Keith Prunella is a Solutions Architect at VMC Consulting. Contact Keith at keithpr@vmc.com or 877.393.8622.
