Adaptive Vs. Responsive Website Design

[iamaaron]

We all have heard the term Responsive thrown all over the place. But, I have to know, from you, what do you think is the best route to take? I have read books, watched videos, took online courses for “Responsive Website Design”, but generally the true definition of Responsive is vague. In my opinion, Responsive is completely different from Adaptive. I believe the community needs to get a grasp on these two definitions. The two definitions are as follows:

Responsive: Design fully responds to any width/height.
Adaptive: Design fully adapts to specific widths/heights.

What are your thoughts? Do you have a different definition?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated,
Thank you,
Aaron

[iamaaron]

@ToxicFire: You make a very good and bold statement. But believe it or not people are designing to cater to specific device resolution hence… 320px, 480px, 768px, 1024px, 1140px, 1280px… I don’t understand why people are still using pixels in widths, I try to use percentages when it comes to widths and EMs for everything else.

But thank you for your input, it’s always great to see what others have to say about the state of the web.

[TheDoc]

I think designing for specific resolutions still has its place.

Sometimes the design requires certain breakpoints. For some sites our company creates, we choose breakpoints based on the design, not devices out there. If the design needs to change at 600px then that’s our breakpoint.

[Author]

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