2012 has been a very unusual year in the PC market. For the first time since 2001, PC sales are projected to be lower than they were in the previous year. So which devices are consumers buying? Tablets, for one thing.
Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million this year.
Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million this year. Their sales numbers may top notebooks next year. Smartphones, of course, are also a hot commodity — according to Nielsen, the majority of U.S. mobile subscribers now own smartphones, not feature phones.
Meanwhile, the shift to mobile is happening at an extraordinary speed. Today, 30% of Mashable’s traffic is mobile. By the end of next year, this may exceed 50%. For those of us who create websites and services, all this leads to a singular conclusion: A million screens have bloomed, and we need to build for all of them.
Responsive Web Design
In simple terms, a responsive web design uses “media queries” to figure out the resolution of the device it’s being served on. Flexible images and fluid grids then size correctly to fit the screen. The benefits are obvious: You build a website once, and it works seamlessly across thousands of different screens.
Given the rapid adoption of tablets and smartphones and the fact that users currently seem to prefer reading their news on the mobile web rather than in apps I think it’s inevitable that 2013 will be the year that responsive design takes off.
For publishers, it offers the simplest way to reach readers across multiple devices. For users, it ensures a great experience on every screen.
As Ethan Marcotte, the author of Responsive Web Design, explains, “Now more than ever, we’re designing work meant to be viewed along a gradient of different experiences. Responsive web design offers us a way forward, finally allowing us to ‘design for the ebb and flow of things.’”
This article was taken from Mashable