With the rapid creation of new and innovative ways for consumers to browse the Internet, delivering a functional yet aesthetically pleasing online experience has become an increasingly difficult task for web developers to do (Lee, et al., 2015). Aspect ratio, pixel density, screen size, and browser type are some of the things that must be taken into account when creating a website or app for the web; and with the release of every new phone, tablet, laptop, television, and in some cases refrigerator, more dimensionality is introduced to the complexity of the problem.
In order to respond to the issue of widely varying screen sizes, "responsive design" has become a widely used web design methodology that allows web content …show more content…
Some popular frameworks are Bootstrap, Semantic UI, Foundation, and Pure (Lee, et al., 2015). Responsive web frameworks are pre-written collections of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that provide functionality and styling for commonly created elements and trends in web design. These frameworks are optimized for responsiveness and expedite the development process by separating the development of layouts and organization of content from the styling of content (Pandey, 2013). Using a web framework for layout and organization of the page and applying custom styles to the framework elements to create a theme that matches the organization 's branding has become a popular web design technique (Wei, et al., 2014). One of the main benefits of the increased speed in front-end development provided by frameworks is the ability to quickly create and modify prototypes, which is an increasingly important technique given the numerous possible sizes and orientations of devices that can view the content and must be accommodated for (Pandey, 2013). Pandey states that the use of prototypes was invaluable in determining the changes to be made in response to various screen sizes and orientations, which is a fundamental requirement of creating a responsive web site or …show more content…
Pandey argues that although responsive web design requires more initial planning and often times more code, it is a better solution than not delivering a mobile optimized experience and will be subsequently less costly than developing and maintaining multiple websites for different screen sizes and orientations. Designing a responsive web site comes with a few trade-offs, however, which are mainly of code complexity and the lack of the ability to design device targeted experiences. It is up to the organization to decide whether these trade-offs are worth the advantages provided by responsive design or not (Pandey,