Responsive Web Design Tools 2017
Responsive web design is a technique used to make websites look good on almost any device, from desktop computers and laptops to tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices. With the increasing popularity of mobile phones, responsive web design tools have become more important than ever for web developers and designers.
In this article we will present you with a list of the best responsive web design tools available today. We’ll also offer some advice on how to use them effectively, so you can start working on your own responsive website immediately after reading this article.
Responsive Web Design Tools 2017
Responsive web design ensures a site renders well on different devices and screens. Use responsive design tools to make sure your users have an optimal viewing experience.
Here is a list of responsive design tools. There are tools to build responsive web page elements, and tools to test your design on a wide variety of actual devices and screen sizes. There are premium and free tools.
Tools for Responsive Design
Responsive Design, Responsively Illustrated. Created by James Mellers of Adobe, this simple tool allows users to play with an illustrative example of responsive design. Resize your browser window to see the types of size constraints you’ll be utilizing. Price: Free.
Responsive Design, Responsively Illustrated
Bootstrap. Build responsive, mobile-first projects on the web with one of the most popular front-end component libraries. Bootstrap is an open source framework for developing with HTML, CSS, and JS. Quickly prototype your ideas or build your entire app with Bootstrap’s responsive grid system, prebuilt components, and plugins built on jQuery. Price: Free.
Google Mobile-Friendly Test. Test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device by using Google’s free Mobile-Friendly Test. Designing your websites to be mobile friendly ensures that your pages perform well on all devices. Price: Free.
Justinmind. Justinmind is an all-in-one prototyping tool for web and mobile apps. Define websites and apps for web, iOS, and Android with a drag-and-drop interface — no coding involved. Customize and adjust your wireframe with a dynamic layout to fit all screen sizes across all devices with Justinmind’s flexible events and actions. Justinmind will let you view and test your web and mobile app prototypes instantly from any browser, with native web display and different device skins. Price: Plans start at $19 per month.
Justinmind
Gridset. Gridset enables designers to set up creative layout grids for the web without having to worry about the calculations. Gridset lets you tailor specific grids across breakpoints you define for effective responsive design, ensuring your content looks good on any screen. Price: Plans start at $9 per month.
Adaptive Images. Adaptive Images detects your visitor’s screen size and automatically creates, caches, and delivers device appropriate re-scaled versions of your web page’s embedded HTML images. It is intended for use with responsive designs, to be combined with fluid image techniques. No markup changes needed. Price: Free.
FitText. A jQuery plugin for inflating web type, FitText makes font-sizes flexible. Use this plugin on your fluid or responsive layout to achieve scalable headlines that fill the width of a parent element. FitText is for huge display text only. Price: Free.
FitText
Ghostlab. With Ghostlab, you can test any website on various browsers and mobile devices simultaneously. Just drag the URL into Ghostlab and click the “Play” button. Start testing in one of the connected browsers or devices. All other browsers and devices will mirror your actions — clicking buttons, following links, scrolling the page, filling out forms, and hovering your mouse over special elements. Take a screenshot directly from within Ghostlab, annotate it in the integrated image editor, and drag it to whatever bug tracker you use. Price: $49.
Am I Responsive? Am I Responsive is a tool for quick screenshots on responsive design breakpoints. Simply enter your URL. Rearrange and reorder the devices by clicking and dragging on the device. Use the Am I RWD bookmarklet to check the responsiveness on any site with a single click from your very own browser. Price: Free.
Responsinator. Responsinator helps website makers quickly get an indication of how their responsive site will look on the most popular devices. However, it does not precisely replicate how it will look. For accurate testing always test on the real devices. Price: Free.
Responsinator
Google Chrome DevTools Device Mode. Google Chrome DevTools is a set of authoring, debugging, and profiling tools built into Google Chrome. Use the Responsive Mode during active development of your site and app and resize the viewport often to create a freely responsive design that adapts to even unknown and future device types. Test your site’s responsiveness using Device Mode’s screen emulator. Viewport controls allow you to test your site against a variety of devices, as well responsively. Price: Free.
Browser Stack. Browser Stack is a platform for live, web-based browser testing. Test on a range of physical Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets for the most accurate results. Test with 1,100 desktop browsers on real machines, with media streaming, developer tools, keyboard shortcuts, and more. Generate screenshots at actual device sizes on iOS, Android, OS X, and Windows. Price: $29 per month.
CrossBrowserTesting. CrossBrowserTesting gives you access to the browsers and devices your visitors are using. Perform interactive manual and exploratory testing on 1,500 desktop and mobile browsers. Take screenshots automatically across multiple browsers at once, comparing full-page responsive layouts. Take visual tests with every new change, and compare them to historical versions for easier regression testing. Price: $29 per month.
responsive testing tools free
Every modern website needs a responsive design. This does require more effort but the end result is worthwhile.
I actually recommend testing your ideas with responsive design tools to see how your site looks at each stage. You can look for usability issues on different screen sizes all from one handy tool.
And these free tools are my top picks for responsive testing since they’re all super easy to use. Best of all these support many device sizes so you can get a good feeling for how your layout should look from smartphones to desktops.
1. XRespond
The XRespond app calls itself a “virtual device lab” and I’d say that’s pretty spot on.
With this site you can preview how any website looks on a variety of devices. The site works in a long horizontal style where you have to scroll sideways to see all the screen formats.
The label above each screen tells you the exact size and which device it matches to. Plus from the dropdown menu there’s a wide selection of smartphones, tablets, and laptops for testing specific devices.
That dropdown even supports a custom width/height setting if you want to see how your site appears on specific monitors. An excellent testing tool for responsive design and it supports a lot of variety in device styles.
2. Responsinator
One similar app you also might enjoy is Responsinator.
Instead of using a horizontal scrollbar this site lists each device preview in a vertical column. This way you can scroll down through each device and preview the site on each one.
Devices include the most common iPhones and the Android Nexus devices, both with portrait and landscape previews. You’ll also find iPad device previews also in portrait and landscape.
Another cool feature is the switch between HTTP and HTTPS. Responsinator offers both types for previewing sites depending on the URL you enter. It’ll automatically match whatever site you’re previewing to avoid SSL errors.
3. Responsive Design Checker
Need to quickly check if a website really is responsive? Then try using this Responsive Design Checker made specifically for custom screen sizes.
Once you enter a URL you have full control over the responsive testing space. You can alter the width/height however you want and even use it to match certain screen ratios if you use an aspect ratio tool.
In the sidebar you’ll find a ton of predefined screen sizes for common devices like Nexus tablets, Kindles, and even newer phones like the Google Pixel.
The site also supports large screen sizes with desktop monitors up to 24″ wide. Surprisingly these large sizes work well even on small monitors because the preview pane resizes based on ratio, not total pixel width.
So if you’re struggling to test 1920px monitors on your smaller MacBook screen this tool is well worth bookmarking.
Bonus: LT Browser
LT Browser is a live mobile view debugging tool that allows you to check the mobile view of the website on various viewports and debug them on the go.
You can perform responsive tests on 25+ mobile views & in case you find your favourite device missing, you can add a custom device, with the screen resolution and size you want. It also allows you to save these custom devices for any future use.
With this testing tool, you can directly compare different mobile views simultaneously with the side-by-side view. It also supports mirror action, where your actions on the first device get replicated in the other one as well. Making it easier to compare the mobile view on different devices simultaneously.
It comes with an in-built debugging tool, where you can validate your fixes on the go. To top it off you can mark bugs and share them with your team on your favourite project management tool such as Jira, Asana etc.
4. Google Mobile Test
Google is full of great tools for webmasters and their Mobile-Friendly Test is one such example.
This testing tool isn’t really a previewer and it doesn’t help you spot UI bugs. Instead it’s a dedicated mobile tool for pinpointing issues within your site on mobile.
Once the test runs you’ll either pass or fail as a mobile-friendly site. This is a little too generic for designers but Google offers tips based on problem areas & page elements that could use improvement.
Keep this saved as a trustworthy mobile testing tool. It’s not a complete resource for responsive testing but it’s a great place to gather info and it comes from perhaps the most authoritative company on the web.
5. Matt Kersley’s Responsive Tool
Designer & developer Matt Kersley released his own free testing tool for responsive layouts. This one’s a lot simpler than others and doesn’t have many frills.
Instead it’s a plain inline site previewer with 5 fixed widths: 240px, 320px, 480px, 768px, 1024px.
The preview panes do feature scrollbars so you can move through content effortlessly. However you can’t click any links or browse through other pages within the panes, so this is really best for testing singular pages.
But for a simple tool that gets the job done this works great and it’s one of the few testing tools that offers a 240px width by default.
6. Am I Responsive?
You probably won’t need this tool if you’re looking for pixel-perfect accuracy.
Instead the Am I Responsive? website works best for quick checks and previews on a few common device types.
You simply enter a website URL and it’ll load into four device preview panes: a smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop. These are not to scale so you’re only looking at the site as a ratio.
But this is really cool for grabbing screenshots of your site to showcase how it looks in various devices. The rendering is accurate to scale and it relies on your browser for proper rendering.
Plus this tool lets you run localhost addresses so you can even check projects you’re building locally on your computer.
7. Designmodo Responsive Test
One other tool I really like is the Responsive Web Design Tester created by Designmodo. This free tool again lets you preview a site in your browser based on certain widths.
But the one cool addition to this tool is the grid-based page setup. You can check your page for pixel points and even study the page’s grid using this webapp.
Alongside the predefined device widths you can also drag the preview pane to fit whatever screen widths you’re testing. It has inputs for the width/height if you need to enter sizes manually too.
But each device icon in the top-right corner lets you select from dozens of common screen sizes making this tool perfect for checking any device you can imagine.
Conclusion
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