Basics of Website Designing And Its Type

In simple words, web design means designing a website. Web designing is a subset of web development. It involves various aspects like web page layout, content creation, and graphic designing. Web design is the development of the front end look(user side) of a web page. In this modern world where the internet plays a major role, almost every business requires a web page. To make an effective online presence it is important for a web page to be easily accessible and a delight to the eye of the user.

What Do We Need In A Website?

For the web page to be attractive and easy to navigate through it is important that the web page is designed in a proper fashion. There are a lot of web designs. To be able to understand which web designs suit your business it is necessary to first understand what are the different types of web designs available. However, there are a lot of web developers/designers who will help you get through the process it is always good to have a little information about such stuff. Let us now look into the different types of web designs.

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Fixed Web Design

Also known as the static web design, it is one of the most basic forms of web designing and to my knowledge, one of the first types of web designs also. It is mostly not used by any of the web designers due to the inconvenience it creates for the users. A fixed design implies that the width of pixels is fixed. To explain in simple terms it means that the font, size of images and any other thing does not vary when the device it is operated on varies

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Why the Fixed-Sized Website Is Not Good?

We know that these days we browse the web on our phones, laptops, tablets of various sizes and shapes. Now imagine a website that does not accommodate itself according to the screen size and type of device. The font you see on the laptop and the phone is the same. It becomes excessively difficult to access this website on any other platform except the one it was designed for. None of the users these days have so much time or patience to browse the websites on only a specific platform. So such kinds of websites do not gather much traffic and are lost the deeper pages of the browser, and eventually become useless.

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Drawbacks of Fluid Web Design

The one obvious drawback of fluid web designing is that it will not look good on at least one of the screens (small or big). If the web page is designed for larger screens then when it is viewed on a small screen it looks crowded and similarly, when the web page is designed for a smaller screen and is viewed on a large screen it looks somewhat empty. However, it is a lot better than the fixed type of design and is used in some scenarios where the other options are worse.

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Adaptive Web Design

Adaptive web design is the most accommodating type of web designing available. As the name suggests in adaptive web design there are versions of the web page available and they are adapted according to the size of the screen the web page is viewed on. It is called adaptive web design because it adapts according to the size and dimensions of the screen the web page is viewed on. It is designed in various forms for specific sizes of the screen. This was first introduced in 2011 by Aaron Gustafson in his book.

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Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is somewhat similar to adaptive web design. This term was first introduced by Ethan Marcotte in his book about responsive web designing. Unlike adaptive web design responsive web design changes according to the change in the browser width. Where on one hand adaptive web design is designed only for a few standard browser sizes responsive web design responds according to the changes in the sizes of the browses.

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Drawbacks of Adaptive Web Design

Re-Sizable On Other Devices
When you open a web page on your laptop or your phone the website selects the dimensions most appropriate to the dimension of the device on which the web page is opened and then applies it. Resizing the screen does not have any effects on the designing of the web page in adaptive web designing. It is a good type of designing but the only drawback is that it does not accurately display the data because these days devices are available in a wide range of sizes and web pages cannot be designed for every size. However, for some standard sizes, it is really good practice.

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Drawbacks of Adaptive Web Design

Re-Sizable On Other Devices
When you open a web page on your laptop or your phone the website selects the dimensions most appropriate to the dimension of the device on which the web page is opened and then applies it. Resizing the screen does not have any effects on the designing of the web page in adaptive web designing. It is a good type of designing but the only drawback is that it does not accurately display the data because these days devices are available in a wide range of sizes and web pages cannot be designed for every size. However, for some standard sizes, it is really good practice.

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Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is somewhat similar to adaptive web design. This term was first introduced by Ethan Marcotte in his book about responsive web designing. Unlike adaptive web design responsive web design changes according to the change in the browser width. Where on one hand adaptive web design is designed only for a few standard browser sizes responsive web design responds according to the changes in the sizes of the browses.

When the size of the browser changes ( for example the browser is minimized) responsive web design accommodates the elements on the web page accordingly to give an optimal look to the website. It is one of the most convenient and preferred types of web designing which is user-friendly. However, designing a responsive web design requires a very good intricate knowledge of the users and their preferences but it will surely be worth it.