Flexible Websites

Flexible or responsive websites are those thatfit multiple screen sizes. For the designer and developer that means they only have to work one version of the website instead of designing one for computers and other for mobile devices.

Just a few years ago, creating a fixed websites was practical. Fixed-width layouts are easier and to create than flexible ones, the layouts don't break, and content doesn't overflow, but after smartphones, netbooks and tablets took off the market, it was almost a necessity to create websites to fit into the smaller screens. In previous years mobile versions of websites were a suitable solution for many devices, but right now the variety of screen sizes makes flexible design the best answer for the present circumstances. Fixed layouts will give you perfect control over your page height, but that's a level of control a designer must release in order to create better user experiences for their websites.

A flexible web design should be fully proportional for multiple devices. After widths or heights hit a certain point, a design would then change stylesheets to alter content availability, layout structure, and more. A flexible website fills the whole window, without the potentially awkward empty space left over by many fixed-width designs that can make a design seem unbalanced. With a flexible design, we can retain balance, proportion, and hierarchy. However, the results of flexible design are unpredictable, and users will have varying experiences of your page. Keeping an structured and blocked-in text ensures all areas will scale nicely and nothing will break out of the "block grid".

In the past flexible layouts were more difficult to implement, but with the use of CSS3 new features, developers have more options for doing this task more easily.