When people discuss responsive design the main feature that comes to mind is a design which responds to the size and shape of the screen it is being viewed on, for example a desktop computer screen, compared to a tablet, compared to a mobile phone.
But, as Chris Russell, head of product for news at BBC Future Media, explains, there are more characteristics of mobile devices which designs can be responsive too.
“We also detect people’s connection speeds and we give them an experience that’s more optimised, for example we deliver a lower resolution version of images but if somebody’s on a higher connection speed we immediately replace that with a much higher quality image, so it’s not just about device type and screen size, there are various different ways in which we’re basically responding to the many different ways in which people are trying to get our service.”
