

But there’s only so much space on mobile and you have to be judicious. It is true that graphics can improve navigation. You’ll notice links that had icons will shrink down and completely lose the icons on smaller screens. Past a certain breakpoint the CN logo shrinks down along with the main links. This same effect can be seen on Cartoon Network’s page where they have a top navigation with icons.


White space increases between page sections giving the illusion of crafty content areas. It seems like a small consideration but it makes a big impact in the mobile experience.
#Wrapping text in responsive site designer series#
Agra Culture has a series of image blocks that display text on hover.īut since mobile users can’t hover the text is automatically displayed past a certain breakpoint. Try to feel out what would look best and try to achieve that.Īlso consider how your site behaves on mobile screens. You’ll have to trust your gut when it comes to mobile typography. Meanwhile the header text is also reduced in size while spacing out the paragraphs a bit. But their mobile responsive layout shortens this space dramatically. The Next Web’s desktop layout has a lot of white space between the header and the top navigation. You can also adjust line height, letter spacing, color, and the margins between two blocks of text. There’s a lot you can do with responsive typography beyond the typical sizing properties. But if you have oversized headers or tiny paragraph text then you’ll need to adjust sizes at specific breakpoints. Some designs can get by with the same traditional font sizes. You should instead focus on how much space you need between elements and between other sections of the page. The horizontal should be controlled by one element at a time. Each site has a different solution.īut when you’re shifting white space for mobile you always need to think vertically. When you’re on a desktop the entire homepage spans 3-4 columns of content.īut responsive users need to get a simplified version of one really long column.Īll the other columns can either drop beneath the main column, or they can be hidden from the responsive page. This is true with corporate websites and with blogs like Mashable. You need that space to break up sections of the page and to let blocks of text breathe. The idea of negative space is powerful in web design. But the responsive layout needs more vertical negative space between elements to create that vertical flow. One page section would ideally span the entire width of a 320px smartphone screen. Once you resize the page all these little block elements drop beneath each other. On Jisc you’ll notice there are many horizontally-oriented page sections. This defines the pace of content and it’s the natural “flow” for smartphones & tablets with resolutions that are longer than wider. White space on a desktop layout moves across and down the page.īut when you’re dealing with smaller devices you should be more concerned with vertical space. Font sizes get reduced and eventually the links are crammed together.Īs long as visitors can still browse the site and tap on the right links then you can squeeze them together as much as needed. Try Startup App Try Slides App Other ProductsĪll links are still visible but they get rearranged into different widths. With Startup App and Slides App you can build unlimited websites using the online website editor which includes ready-made designed and coded elements, templates and themes. It’s generally a good idea to avoid hidden menus when possible, so a solution like Regent College would be perfect for sites with smaller menus. It’s a very complex solution but it provides a more natural experience for different browser resolutions.Īnd remember if the navigation is small enough then you won’t even need the hamburger. Once you go even smaller the nav links eventually move back to the top with a hidden hamburger menu. The logo and links all rearrange themselves into the new sidebar. Then at the 960px breakpoint the entire layout shifts from a top header to a sidebar navigation. For example Dorigati uses a full-width navigation menu which eventually breaks down into a grid system. Most websites rearrange their navigation a few times before finally settling on the three-bar icon. This is a common technique and generally a great idea to space out links for finger taps on mobile. Once your browser window hits a certain breakpoint the links automatically hide into a menu and get replaced with a hamburger icon.īut pay attention to the extra whitespace added between each link. Here’s an example where the top navigation doesn’t even resize. With Postcards you can create and edit email templates online without any coding skills! Includes more than 100 components to help you create custom emails templates faster than ever before.
