Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). A site designed with RWD adapts the layout to the viewing environment by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries, an extension of the @media rule, in the following ways: The fluid grid concept calls for page element sizing to be in relative units like percentages, rather than absolute units like pixels or points. Flexible images are also sized in relative units, so as to prevent them from displaying outside their containing element. Media queries allow the page to use different CSS style rules based on characteristics of the device the site is being displayed on, most commonly the width of the browser.

Mobile first, unobtrusive JavaScript, and progressive enhancement

"Mobile first",unobtrusive JavaScript, and progressive enhancement are related concepts that predate RWD. Browsers of basic mobile phones do not understand JavaScript ormedia queries, so a recommended practice is to create a basic web site and enhance it for smart phones and PCs, rather than rely on graceful degradation to make a complex, image-heavy site work on mobile phones.