Ultimate Responsive Web Design ToolKit

When it comes to web designing industry, technology is evolving a lot with the passage of time and things are still growing with every passing day. Because of this constant evolvement, nothing can be considered as a sure shot idea to have a nice, responsive web design.  This article will help designers in building a strong toolkit to make a responsive website.

Getting Started

In order to have a strong responsive website, there is a lot that designers have to do. However, having a strong responsive web design toolkit is indeed very important as it can make a huge difference to your website, off course in an utterly positive manner.

Important Elements in making a Website Responsive

Ultimate Responsive Web Design ToolKit

As mentioned earlier, this field is very vast hence, important elements can be many. However, the most important elements that make your website a great responsive one are following:

  1. A supple and fluid framework
  2. Reactive images
  3. Medium being used

If a responsive website is under discussion, it can be a vast one. Our main focus here it to discuss some great tools which will help you in making your website reliably responsive.

Beginner Tools

Before you even begin with website building, it is essential for you to prepare a plan related as to how the essential features on the page will acclimatize in order to fit various browser sizes of multiple devices. We all know that there are so many devices available, thanks to the technology, that website should be functional on all of them and off course in a very good way. You also need to avoid the detachment that normally comes from thoughts mainly about the desktop design.

Now that we have discussed important points related to responsive web designs, let’s get back to the main topic i.e., ultimate responsive web design toolkit.

Sketch Sheets

Sketch Sheets

It is very important for you, as a designer, to find out as to how your website will look in different resolutions. There are plenty of tools available online in order to map out how your website pages shift into various resolutions. Responsive web design sketch sheets, by Jeremy P Alford can be really helpful for you. Using the tool is not at all difficult. Download the zip file and get going.

Receptive Wireframes

Receptive Wireframes

A major difficulty that mostly designers face while building a responsive website is using wireframe in order to show how the receptive design will exert. An experimental tool by James Mellers, is really helpful for designers in finding out how approachable wireframing of intricate desings can work.

Multi-Device design prototype

Multi-Device design prototype

It is good to learn from experiences of someone else so it is better to see how people before you have handled making a responsive website. You will find multiple tools to find out popular patterns for responsive websites. Search for Luke Wroblewski and you will get a lot of good help.

A supple and Fluid Framework

A supple and fluid framework

The important tool needed for responsive web design is a fluid grid. Golden grid system, Simple grid and Symantec grid system are a few names which can prove to be really helpful.

Foldy960

Foldy960

This is being used as foundation for many responsive projects and designers are really happy with it.

Simple Grid

Simple grid

If you just want to get up and get going with your responsive website, get simple grid tool.

Tools for receptive Imagery is a Must

As mentioned earlier, having responsive images is a very important element in building a responsive website. Making images load on various devices properly can be quite challenging for every designer.

Adaptive Images

Adaptive Images

Matt Wilcox has made it easier for designers by making a tool to create adaptive images. This tool used PHP and JavaScript and provide users’ with images loaded properly as per their devices. You will not have to put any extra effort.

Sencha

Sencha

This is a great tool being used for proper resizing of images. It propels optimized adaptation of hosted images for the size of device on which the images are being viewed.

Text Tools

Having tools related to text while building up a responsive website can decrease your effort a lot.

FitText

Text Tools

It will make your text and headlines responsive to the devices being used.

SlabText

Slabtext

It is another tool for the same purpose and these tools can resize your text responsively and responsible for user’s viewability.

Tools Related to Media Queries

This is the third and again one of the most important elements in making a responsive web design. Tools for media queries will help you in shifting elements in the page into a responsive state.

Respond.js

RespondJS

Nowadays, a major issue that responsive websites are facing is that browsers incompatible with media queries are being left behind. Using this software will prove to be a good practice for designers.

CSS3-Mediaqueries.js  

CSS3 Media queries

This software enables all browsers to apply different kind of media queries without any issues.

Adapt.js

AdaptJS

This thing works in old browsers too and the best part is that it is good with detecting various dimensions of different browsers and will serve style sheets accordingly.

Boilerplates

Boilerplates

Boilerplates is a great combination of all tools which will help you in designing a responsive website, keeping the three important elements mentioned above, in mind.

320 and up

320-and-Up

If you want to make your website up and running in an Agile way, go for 320 and Up.

Gridless

Gridless

It is actually serving the purpose of being among the basis of responsive websites.

Responsive Plugin Tools

Although, new browsers and softwares are always prepared for responsive plugins, sometimes it’s just good to be careful.

WordPress Plugin

This thing is way too promising in converting any WP theme into a responsive one.

Conclusion

The collection of tools mentioned above can really make up an ultimate responsive web design toolkit. These tools can ease up the entire process of making a responsive website. Isn’t it good to have so many tools available for your convenience instead of going through a hassle and making a new design for every browser, every device and every desktop?


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8 Comments

  1. Nikita says:

    Good Article, I have just created my new responsive website, check http://www.dronamobile.com do share your feedback about the same. Do let me know if you need help in responsive design

  2. Steve says:

    No Twitter Bootstrap mention?

  3. To bad 9 out of 10 customers just don’t want to pay the extra money needed to make up for the extra time. End result is still a website and a simple mobile website getting its data from the same CMS.

    Maybe one day the tools are smart enough to cut down the extra time so cost is no longer an issue.

  4. Hi,

    You might want to add detectMQ.js to the list. Handy if you need to do some specific JS hacks.

    A while ago I developed a carousel especially responsive layout in mind. I couldn’t find anything that would fit my purposes so I had to bake my own. It should be pretty easy to style it. The markup is somewhat minimal as well and there are a few extension points available at the JS.

  5. CJ says:

    Great resource, thanks for sharing. I have been working hard to get my head around fluid grids and I have found YAML (http://www.yaml.de/) to be fairly effective as well…currently integrating it into a wordpress site.

  6. RWD is overrated, and tools aren’t enough to make it right!

  7. Great article and good reference source. Thanks for publishing all this information at one conveniently located place. I’ll be sure and bookmark it for later reading.