If you wake up in the morning and check a favorite website on your laptop, then check it again on your tablet, and again later in the day on your smartphone while waiting in line, then you're like many people who access the internet from different web enabled devices. Most people who own multiple devices eventually get into the habit of checking their email and favorite websites from all of them at some point a practice that is largely possible due to responsive design.

When it comes to the mobile web, you'll hear no shortage of experts touting the advantages of responsive design. This became especially true after Google recommended the technique in April of last year. There's no doubt that it's an effective way for to create websites that adapt to a variety of devices, but is responsive design for everyone and every website?

The responsive design approach says that a website should respond to the user according the device, screen size, and orientation. As a result, websites created with the responsive design method are designed to display optimally at a range of sizes, no matter what device or screen resolution the user is using.

n a world where people frequently switch between a growing array of devices, responsive design allows webmasters to create "flexible" websites that adjust to fit the device and user. This is done through the use of flexible grid layouts, adaptive images, and CSS media queries. Flexible grid layouts use relative units in essence, percentages rather than fixed units, like pixels. Media queries analyze the device upon which a site is being displayed in order to figure out how best to display the website.

In this practice, architects utilize technology to design buildings that "react" to the people using it. For example, combination of robotics and flexible materials allow buildings to expand and retract according to the number of people inside them. Lighting levels and room temperature automatically adjust to accommodate the size of the crowd. Responsive web design works in much the same way.

Given all of this, responsive design sounds like a godsend when it comes to displaying a single website across multiple devices.