After reading Ethan Marcotte’s article “Responsive Web Design”, I’ve realized how important it is for a designer to have a flexible foundation on their site in order to make the site more interactive and user friendly. By having a flexible foundation, a site fluid, non-fixed layout, which makes it easier to add content without having to worry about your browser window’s width being thrown off by the new feature. They’re layout agnostic, meaning they “make no assumptions” about a page’s width or height, and they adapt every time a new feature is added to the page. We cannot make our design scales work in all displays or views, the author points out, but it is important to make our site user friendly in the “desktop-centric” display, which is how users typically view a site.
It’s important for us to keep flexibility in mind as we’re designing our web pages because it makes our sites more visually appealing and user friendly, both of which are what attracts readers to sites. If we can design our sites to not have a fixed layout, but rather be flexible and fluid in it’s design, then we won’t have to worry about unnecessary adjustments being made whenever a feature is added. Which, in turn, will make our site more appealing for a user to navigate because they wont run into logistical issues along the way.