What is responsive web design?

I got a question a few days ago which was really good: What does “responsive web design” mean, and why should I use it? In short, responsive web design is a term that describes the concept of building a website design in a way that allows the layout to change depending on what screen resolution the viewer has. For example, an advanced four-column layout that looks great with a screen width of 1280 pixels (or higher) could be simplified into a more simple 2-column layout on screens with 1024 pixels width – and further down to a single column on small screens such as those on smartphones or small tablet computers. It is an alternative to building separate mobile sites, and when done in a good way it can look really beautiful.

Instead of going into details, I recommend you to read the excellent Beginner’s Guide to Responsive Web Design by Nick Pettit. It describes the concept and provides further links to a lot of useful articles that I have learned a lot from. So far, I haven’t released any responsive website template. But I will do that in the future for sure, both new designs and alternate versions of already existing template releases.