15 Must-Read Responsive Web Design Tutorials

15 Must-Read Responsive Web Design Tutorials

“Responsive Web Design offers an alternative. By marrying fluid, grid-based layouts and CSS3 media queries, we can create one design that, well, responds to the shape of the display rendering it. It’s a more unified, more holistic approach to design, one that doesn’t see the web’s inherent flexibility as a constraint to be limited.”

-Ethan Marcotte

We here at Pixel77 have made it our mission to help you become the best web designer you can be. In order to do so, we frequently try to predict upcoming trends and keep you up to date with the most recent developments in web design, web development and the technologies associated with them.

It should be no surprise then that we’ve repeatedly made it a point to talk about Responsive Web Design (RWD) and its importance in the web design industry.

RWD is truly one of the most important and game-changing trends of the past years and, as the articles we linked to in the paragraph above observe, it’s going to stay for the foreseeable future.

So, in order to get you up to speed with what’s going on in the world of Responsive Web Design and to make sure that you’re up to speed with the best design resources out there, we’ve compiled a list of our 15 favorite RWD tutorials, which we’ll be getting to in a moment.

But first, since RWD is bound to be an unfamiliar concept to at least some of you, let’s talk about Responsive Web Design, what it means and why it’s so important.

Simply put, Responsive Web Design is a way of designing websites so that you only have one design that works well on all platforms. That is to say that RWD is a way to design websites so that they look good on any kind of display, from the huge desktop monitor to the extremely small smartphone display.

That’s why Responsive Web Design is so popular. Instead of getting a mobile site with limited functions, the end user gets the full experience of your website regardless of the device they are using to access it.

Well, now that we’ve explained RWD, on to our list of 15 awesome Responsive Web Design tutorials!

1. Responsive Web Design: What it is and How to Use it by Kayla Knight

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This is a great introductory tutorial to Responsive Web Design. Kayla Knight walks you through the basics of RWD and illustrates them extremely well. All in all, it’s one of the best introductory tutorials on this subject and is definitely worth reading if you’re not quite sure where to get started when trying to use Responsive Web Design.

2. Responsive Website Navigation by Thoriq Firdaus

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Since one of the most important aspects of a website is ease of navigation, any RWD-driven website has to have an extremely well designed navigation page. This is why we’ve included this superb responsive website navigation tutorial written by Thoriq Firdaus. It’s an easy to follow and extremely useful tutorial, so do check it out!

3. Build a Basic Responsive Site with CSS by Jason Michael

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Another great introductory tutorial to the world of Responsive Web Design. Not only does this tutorial walk you through the basics of RWD, but author Jason Michael makes it a point to dispel some of the most frequent myths related to responsive design.

4. How to Turn Any Website Into a Responsive Site by Rochester Oliveira

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While this tutorial also starts off with the basics of RWD, it breaks down all the elements involved expertly and, by the end of it, you’re bound to know more about RWD and possess an extremely valuable skill, that of making your own pre-existing website a responsive one. Definitely a must-read!

5.  Design Sites by Using the Responsive Grid System by Graham Miller

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While the Responsive Grid System isn’t a framework in itself, it’s definitely worth understanding, and who better to explain it to you than its creator, Graham Miller? This is a great basic tutorial for RWD, and one that is bound to get you creating responsive sites within the hour!

6. Introducing Responsive Web Typography With FlowType.JS by JD Graffam

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As we all know, typography is the future of the web. So it’s not just a bonus if you know how to create responsive type, but a soon-to-be prerequisite. Therefore it’s a good thing JD Graffam has written this great tutorial to help you understand how to do so. A must-read RWD tutorial!

7. How to Make Your Typography Responsive by Val Head

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Yet another responsive typography tutorial. Val Head correctly observes that one size just does not fit all anymore. That’s why, in order to create a completely responsive website, it’s essential to have your website scale its type as well as its images and layout. Lucky for you, this awesome tutorial can help you do so!

8. Responsive Design in 3 Steps by Nick La

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This great tutorial explains how to properly make use of meta tags, HTML structure and media queries in order to produce great responsive sites. It’s another one of the more basic, introductory tutorials on this list, but it’s extremely well written and, if you’re not quite sure on how to use any of the aforementioned elements, it can provide a great starting place.

9.  CSS: Responsive Navigation Menu by Nick La

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Another great tutorial upon whose completion you will be able to create the all-important responsive navigation menu, a must-have in any responsive website. It’s clear and concise, so you should definitely check it out!

10.  Scalable Navigation Patterns in Responsive Web Design by Michael Mesker

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This tutorial helps you create templates that make the user-friendly and responsive configuration a breeze. It also imparts the lessons author Michael Mesker learned from working on a large RWD project, so it’s definitely worth reading!

11. Responsively Retrofitting an Existing Site With RWD Retrofit by Matt Stow

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Author Matt Stow walks you through the steps you need to take in order to make your older, pre-existing and possibly outdated website design into a modern responsive site. It’s a great tutorial that we strongly recommend you read.

12. Convert a Menu to a Drop-Down for Small Screens by Chris Coyier

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This awesome tutorial helps you get around a very common problem designers run into when trying to create websites that work equally well on mobile and desktop interfaces: the size of the menu. With the help of this tutorial, menu scaling will never be an issue again!

13. Responsive Images: Experimenting With Context-Aware Image Sizing by Scott Jehl

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This is a great tutorial that teaches you how to scale your images properly by using a mobile-first approach when building your website. Author Scott Jehl is clear, concise and comprehensive, so do make sure you check out this tutorial to pick up this awesome Responsive Web Design Skill!

14. Responsive Horizontal Layout by Mary Lou

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This simple tutorial teaches you how to create a responsive horizontal layout with several scrollable panels. The trick here is that, when the screen size allows it, the panels are laid down horizontally one next to the other, but when shrunk down sufficiently, they meld into one tab that you can scroll through.

15. Fluid CSS3 Slideshow With Parallax Effect by Ring Wing

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This must-read tutorial teaches you how to create a fully responsive parallax slideshow using CSS3. It’s definitely one of the cooler tutorials on our list and we urge you to check it out!

That pretty much wraps up our list of must-read Responsive Web Design tutorials. Which one is your favorite? Why? Let us know by leaving a comment in the section below!

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