How to Choose the Right Unit of Measurement for Responsive Design (2024)

FAQs

How to Choose the Right Unit of Measurement for Responsive Design? ›

In general, it's recommended to use relative units like ems or percentages for font sizes in responsive design, as they allow the font size to adjust based on the size of the screen or user preferences. This can help ensure that your design looks good on a wide range of devices.

Rem, Em, Percentage (%), View-width (vw) and View-height are most commonly used. Rem is an absolute unit relative to the root element of the HTML document and is commonly used for font sizes. The Rem unit is a scalable unit in which the browser renders into pixel values. I recommend it for responsiveness.

VW, VH, and %

So 100vh is 100% of the viewport height. VW and VH are great for responsive design and creating scaling spacing and widths or heights of elements. It's also great when you want to ensure an element takes up the full width or height of the screen.

Responsive Design

Relative units like percentages, em, rem, vw, and vh allow the content to adjust based on the screen size or font settings. This is particularly useful for text content, layout containers, and images, as it ensures that they scale appropriately on different devices.

Percentage is one of the most useful CSS units for creating a responsive or fluid layout. Popular frameworks like Bootstrap, foundation, and Bulma use percentage for their base layout. Here the full-width class will be of 100% width of its parent element.

Very small things should be measured in millimeters. Objects larger than 10 mm but smaller than a meter should be measured using centimeters, and objects larger than a meter should be measured using meters. Very large distances should be measured in units of kilometers.

It's best to make your website at least 1920px wide.

A 1280px website will look great on laptops and mobile devices but not so great on large monitors. To ensure your site looks just as good on big screens as it does on small screens, set your max site width to 1920px or more.

Responsive web design is divided into three main components: the media query, the web browser, and the responsive web interface itself.

font-size: 0.2in; Pixels ( px ) are typically the most popular absolute unit for screens. Centimeters, millimeters, and inches are more common for print and you may not have even known they were options!

Best practices for responsive design include the use of a mobile-first approach, with three or more breakpoints, prioritizing or hiding content, minimalism, accessibility and the use of design patterns to enhance the ease of use.

What is the responsive unit for margins? ›

To make margins responsive, use either relative units (e.g. % or em) or media queries, which allow you to define styles depending on the viewport size. This media query will apply the style rule only when the viewport's width is equal to or less than 768px.

The smallest width you should make responsive code is 320px. When you get horizontal scroll that means that you have either: Content which does not wrap. Have elements with a min-width or an element with min-width bigger than the viewport.

If we wanted to measure someone's height, we would use feet or meters. If we wanted to measure someone's weight, we would use pounds or kilograms. If we wanted to measure the capacity of a soda can, we would use milliliters or ounces. If we wanted to measure the height of a beetle, we would use inches or millimeters.

Square Unit: A Metric Unit Used to Measure Area.

In graphic design a point is a unit of measurement most often used to describe type size and line spacing. Points are denoted by the suffix “pt.” The point is the smallest unit of measurement in this system.