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PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for Your Business - New York career advice Thanks to the popularity of smartphones and handheld devices, the internet is nowadays no longer accessed via desktop computers much. Today, almost everyone owns a smartphone or tablet and likes to go through the daily news headlines, shop or view a site on their handheld devices anywhere and anytime. No longer do they have to wait for reaching home or office to access a computer and internet. This increasing preference for mobile internet has made responsive web design much important. What is Responsive website design? Responsive web design and development is a technique that creates a website or system that adjusts itself to the screen of the user. With a responsive design, the browsing experience of a user gets optimized, thanks to the flexible and responsive web page that gets created. It is a front end development technique, in which the content and the layout respond to the size of the screen that it is viewed on. In order to find out how this works, try resizing your browser. Once you do this, you will find a number of things happening, like, the areas will be shrinking, the fonts will become smaller in size, and the layout will be changing, etc., in order to fit in the content to your present screen size. Problem with responsive design: Images Responsive design is a great idea! By, now we all know this. However, what many of us do not know is that this technique has a problem, which is, image serving. When a handheld device shrinks the images in a browser it misuses a lot of bandwidth as well as CPU. However, you need not worry too much because PHP is there for your rescue. The programming language can be used for server adaptive images and implementation of responsive server side or RSS. To know more click here. Responsive images As mentioned above, viewing a desktop-sized image on a mobile screen is only a waste of bandwidth and CPU. To top it, if the user is using a subpar internet connection, the experience of site browsing worsens. Why? All these contribute to making the site slow-loading, thus, irking your potential consumers. Following is a wiser approach for serving images in a responsive site: o Using JavaScript for detecting the screen size of the client and storing it in a cookie. o Re-routing image requests to a PHP file. o Allowing the PHP file to decide if the original image will fit the user's screen size. o If it is alright, the request proceeds as usual. However, if it is not, then the image is resized, served and stored by PHP for future requests.
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PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for Your Business - New York career advice

Nov 18, 2014

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Page 1: PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for Your Business - New York career advice

PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for YourBusiness - New York career advice

Thanks to the popularity of smartphones and handheld devices, the internet is nowadays no longeraccessed via desktop computers much. Today, almost everyone owns a smartphone or tablet andlikes to go through the daily news headlines, shop or view a site on their handheld devices anywhereand anytime. No longer do they have to wait for reaching home or office to access a computer andinternet. This increasing preference for mobile internet has made responsive web design muchimportant.

What is Responsive website design?

Responsive web design and development is a technique that creates a website or system that adjustsitself to the screen of the user. With a responsive design, the browsing experience of a user getsoptimized, thanks to the flexible and responsive web page that gets created.

It is a front end development technique, in which the content and the layout respond to the size ofthe screen that it is viewed on. In order to find out how this works, try resizing your browser. Onceyou do this, you will find a number of things happening, like, the areas will be shrinking, the fontswill become smaller in size, and the layout will be changing, etc., in order to fit in the content toyour present screen size.

Problem with responsive design: Images

Responsive design is a great idea! By, now we all know this. However, what many of us do not knowis that this technique has a problem, which is, image serving. When a handheld device shrinks theimages in a browser it misuses a lot of bandwidth as well as CPU. However, you need not worry toomuch because PHP is there for your rescue. The programming language can be used for serveradaptive images and implementation of responsive server side or RSS. To know more click here.

Responsive images

As mentioned above, viewing a desktop-sized image on a mobile screen is only a waste of bandwidthand CPU. To top it, if the user is using a subpar internet connection, the experience of site browsingworsens. Why? All these contribute to making the site slow-loading, thus, irking your potentialconsumers.

Following is a wiser approach for serving images in a responsive site:

o Using JavaScript for detecting the screen size of the client and storing it in a cookie.

o Re-routing image requests to a PHP file.

o Allowing the PHP file to decide if the original image will fit the user's screen size.

o If it is alright, the request proceeds as usual. However, if it is not, then the image is resized, servedand stored by PHP for future requests.

Page 2: PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for Your Business - New York career advice

Simple procedure, isn't it? Yes and no as well. Yes because the process is indeed short, and nobecause it involves some coding that cannot be messed up; otherwise, it can harm more than helpinga responsive site.

Adaptive images features

o No mark-up alterations

o Work on existing website

o Mobile-first

o Device agnostic

o Up and running within a few minutes

Benefits of responsive design

Now that we are done with knowing how PHP can help you get that perfectly useful responsivewebsite design, let's have a look at how can the latter help a business.

o Take your business to the mobile and tablet audience

The sale of tablets has crossed 100 million last year; meaning now is the time for responsive designfor optimizing content. If your business does not have a responsive site, it is surely missing out ahuge chunk of consumers using mobile for net surfing.

o Boost sales and conversion rates

Responsive design is a great way to improve user experience, as there is no need for redirection.Providing a consistent user experience will have a positive effect on your conversion rates becausepeople are familiar with site and navigation across devices. With a responsive design you can avoidcertain issues such as- performance, functionality and lack of consistent look.

Page 3: PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for Your Business - New York career advice

o Consolidate your reporting and analytics

Having a responsive site frees your head from tasks liketracking user journeys, redirections, funnels andconversion paths between different websites. Websiteanalytics tools like Google analytics is now optimized forhandling different devices and responsive reporting. Allthe tracking and analytics can continue to function in acondensed manner, producing only one report, thus,allowing easier analysis and monitoring.

o Promote your visibility in search engines

Responsive design helps you to manage a single site witha single set of hypertext links; thus, reducing the timethat you have to spend on maintaining the website. This way you get extra time which can be utilizedfor SEO purposes.

Content is very important in Search Engine Optimization. If you publish quality content on regularintervals, it helps boost your search rankings. So, now that you do not have to invest much time inthe upkeep of your sites, you can easily use that it for producing quality content, which can boostyour SEO campaign.

o Save time and cost on mobile development

One of the greatest benefits of responsive design is that itsaves much time and cost, which would have been spentcreating a separate mobile site. Performing tests acrossmultiple sites also increase the development, maintenanceand support overhead.

o Enhance the offline browsing experience of users

With a responsive design, quality content can be delivered to audiences across different devices. Theoffline browsing capacity of HTML 5 allows sites to be accessed easily while users are 'on the go'.Content which is there in hybrid web apps can increasingly be consumed even when internetconnection is unavailable.

o Site maintenance time and cost saving

Page 4: PHP: Get the Right Responsive Website Design for Your Business - New York career advice

Managing and maintaining a single site is amuch less of a hassle as you have less contentto monitor. Besides, a single site can also beeasily optimized with the use of workflow andlayout tools for managing the right content,or site templates which are used for differentdevices.

As the demand of media rich apps and mobileinternet is on the rise, you can stay ahead ofyour competitors with a responsive webdesign. However, make sure that you usePHP to make the images responsive as well.

Author bio: Douglas Ralston is Entrepreneurand Technology Professional in the WebMobile and Application Marketplace. Writing helpful blogs on responsive and mobile websites is hishobby.

http://www.examiner.com/article/php-get-the-right-responsive-website-design-for-your-business