FAQ

To see it in action, open websheen.com on a desktop browser and slowly make the browser thinner and wider.
You should see the layout magically adjust itself to more comfortably fit the new width of the browser, even if you make the page as skinny as the resolution of a mobile phone.

Actually, a better question to ask might be, what problem does responsive web design solve? Well, as you may have noticed, computers aren’t the only piece of hardware with a web browser anymore.The changing landscape of web browsers meant that users expectations also changed; people expected to be able to browse the web on their phones just as easily as they browse the web on a desktop computer.It’s not just small screens, either. Large, high-resolution displays are starting to become much more common than they used to be, and it would be a waste for web designers to not take advantage of this.

In summary, the spectrum of screen sizes and resolutions is widening every day, and creating a different version of a website that targets each individual device is not a practical way forward. This is the problem that responsive web design addresses head on.

WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee and a number of other important freedoms.

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as full content management system and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes, WordPress is limited only by your imagination.

According to W3Techs, almost 55% of the 1 million most visited websites that are run on a content management system (CMS) are run on WordPress. WordPress is a darn fine CMS and is stable and easy to use, but so are Joomla and Drupal. So, why does WordPress have the lion’s share of the top 1 million websites?

So, what does WordPress do differently than Joomla, Drupal and others?

1. Focus

Unlike Joomla and Drupal, which were designed as proper CMS’, WordPress was designed to solve a problem. Also, because WordPress had a clear target audience (bloggers), its developers were able to build a successful business at WordPress.com pretty much from day one.

The story of how WordPress established itself is simple: bloggers had problems, and WordPress provided services to fix those problems.

By contrast, Drupal and Joomla tried to be “everything a geek might need”. Alas, capitalism always wins. Having clearly defined uses is more effective than working in the abstract.
2. Ease of Use

Let’s face it: WordPress is the easiest CMS for a non-techie to use out of the gate. That counts for a lot.

WordPress is committed to serving non-technical users who want to communicate easily and effectively. So, its appeal makes sense when you consider that people who go into communications fields (including sales and marketing) tend not to be introverted technologists.

And because of its corporate ties, WordPress never had the luxury of being able to tell its users to RTFM, nor could it shrug and say, “It works for me.” Rather, the features of WordPress were driven by content people, not techies. Every feature had to be usable by bloggers, including non-technical ones.

Ease of use is an issue that both Joomla and Drupal are working on. But it doesn’t come naturally to them, evidenced by the slow progress they’re making and the fact that their ships are still being sailed by technologists. For example, Drupal still doesn’t even ship with a WYSIWYG editor. Unbelievable but true.

Get the Mode Right

First, always make sure that each and every photo or image you include (both raster and vector) are in CMYK format and not RGB. While RBG offers a greater color range and works well in designing for implementation online, it doesn’t cut it when going to press. Any images that you leave in RGB mode will have to be translated into CMYK by your prepress operator before going to print. This not only takes more time for a prepress technician, but leaves you unsure as to how your color will turn out once on press.

Image Quality

It shouldn’t have to be said, but 72 dpi (dots per inch) will not produce a quality image on press like it will online. Surprisingly, this is a consistent issue prepress operators face in handling images. Always be sure that each of your images is set to at least 300 dpi before sending them to your printer, or you’ll be sadly disappointed when a gorgeous photo you spent hours editing turns out blurry and pixelated once it’s in your hands.

The difference between vector and raster graphics is that raster graphics are composed of pixels, while vector graphics are composed of paths.
A raster graphic, such as a gif or jpeg, is an array of pixels of various colors, which together form an image.

A vector graphic, such as an .eps file or Adobe Illustrator? file, is composed of paths, or lines, that are either straight or curved. The data file for a vector image contains the points where the paths start and end, how much the paths curve, and the colors that either border or fill the paths.

Because vector graphics are not made of pixels, the images can be scaled to be very large without losing quality.

Raster graphics, on the other hand, become blured, since each pixel increases in size as the image is made larger. This is why logos and other designs are typically created in vector format – the quality will look the same on a business card as it will on a billboard.