Responsive Web Design; or “Hey, Where’d My Bottom Scroll Bar Go?”

“Hey, what happened to my bottom scroll bar?” That’s the burning question on everybody’s mind as they scurry through their daily routine, switching from laptop to desktop; tablet to smart-phone. It seems there’s no end to the variety of video screens at which we stare during the course of a day. But on nearly all of them, as we browse our favorite web haunts we can’t help noticing that the bottom scroll bars are all disappearing! And what happened to all those boxes that used to hang half-way off the side of the tablet’s display? Is this a case for Sherlock Holmes?

No worries fellow web denizen, what you’re seeing is the magic of responsive web design, that wondrous and mystical art that makes all of a page’s content fit comfortably on any size screen from a smart-phone to a 27 inch extreme definition (XD) monitor. I won’t bore you with the details of how it all works here, just suffice it to say that there’s usually a little javascript or jQuery operating behind the scenes.

What you really need to know is that all of that content fits optimally on whatever size screen you happen to have in front of you, making only the side scrollbar necessary. The website adjusts the number of columns you see, their width, and how the content is arranged within them. All that is done dynamically so that when a new screen size comes along, the website’s developers don’t even have to modify any code. The site just calculates everything for the new screen size on the fly.

So if you’re in the market for a fresh, new look for your website, don’t spoil it with a bottom scroll bar left over from the last century, and those awkwardly arranged boxes that only look good on one size of screens. Contact us and we’ll build you a Drupal site, the consummate content management system, with a responsive web design theme that will really capture your potential customers’ attention on whatever device they view it. Then when your friends ask, “Hey, what happened to your bottom scroll bar?” You can simply smile knowingly and say, “It’s elementary, my dear friend. JQuery absconded with it.”

Categorized in: Web Design

Published On: Jun 6, 2013