Responsive Web Design (RWD) Vs Adaptive Web Design (AWD): Similarities and Differences

The Hot topic for web developers and website owners is the way that websites can now automatically respond and adapt to any device with any screen size. There is huge dilemma in proposing best web design method for Mobile responsive project to clients. There we are to help you.

RWD vs AWD

Lets discuss in detail about these two options for web design:

A) Responsive Web Design (RWD) 

B) Adaptive Web Design (AWD)

Here seems to be some confusion about these terms, and some may refer to “Responsive design” is a subset of “Adaptive design”. Understanding the key differences between Responsive design and Adaptive design will try to keep everyone on the same page and help you select the best approach for your project.

Responsive Web Design (RWD):

Responsive design is fluid, using CSS3 media queries to respond to any screen sizes. With the use of this CSS3 module, you can create flexible grids that use percentages to create a flexible foundation. Where text can wrap and images can shrink to adjust along with your browser.

Responsive design is client-side which means the page is sent to the device browser, and the browser then modifies the appearance of the page in relation to the size of the browser window.

The definition of a responsive website is that it will fluidly change and respond to fit any screen or device size.

Why You Need A Responsive Website?

• Growing Demand for Smartphones
• Multiple Screen Sizes and Mobile Browsers
• Wide Usage of Internet in mobile devices
• Permits wider browser support
• Compulsory for Getting Good Business

Adaptive Web Design (AWD):

Adaptive web design uses predefined layouts that have been carefully constructed for a variety of screen sizes. A particular layout is activated when the screen size of the device viewing the website is detected and matched with a style sheet.

Adaptive design is predominantly server side. This means that the web server does all of the work of detecting the various devices and loading the correct style sheet depending on the attributes of the device.

The major drawback of AWD is to create multiple layouts hence the maintenance and updation are also costly and time consuming.

Similarities and Differences:

The biggest similarity between the two methods is that they both allow websites to be viewed in mobile devices and various screen sizes. They also provide visitors with an enhanced mobile-friendly user experience.

They are different in the way that they deliver the responsive / adaptive design to the user. RWD is dependent on fluid grids and AWD is relying on predefined size layouts. 

Another major difference is usage of client side or server side is another way in which they differ. 

The visible difference is that responsive design will fluidly alter its layout while you resize your browser window whilst adaptive design will load a specific layout for the device you're viewing the site on. 

Contact Us for more details or inquiries on web design or mobile responsive web designs.

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JAVA 8: Release and Features

Finally, Java 8 arrives on March 18, 2014. This release has been announced at EclipseCon 2014. It is the first major release in Java after two years of time. Java 8 comes with lot of new features which are new to the Java programming itself. From today you can download Java 8 and use it in your project.

Java 8

Lambdas Expressions

Provide a means to pass functions as data. With implicit casting to Single Abstract Method types (such as Runnable) it will dramatically simplify code that needs to pass filters and other predicates as data. (Note that the reason they are called lambdas is that Java has had closures in the form of inner classes since Java 1.1; what some incorrectly refer to as closures are really talking lambdas.) An example of a lambda is x -> x +1.

Stream API

Classes in the new java.util.stream package provide a Stream API to support functional-style operations on streams of elements. The Stream API is integrated into the Collections API, which enables bulk operations on collections, such as sequential or parallel map-reduce transformations.

Extension Methods or Defender Methods

We all are aware of the fact that the interfaces don’t contain any implementation for the methods. To provide support for new APIs which support the use of closures and also which can run on Multi core platforms there has to be some way to add these APIs to existing classes. For example, methods like for Each, map, reduce, filter which act on a collection can be added to the Collection class directly or create a new interface and let all the collection API implement them or leave it to the user of the API to implement the new interface. The first 2 approaches would lead to breaking lots of existing code because of the lack of implementation of these new methods in the interface. The last approach is possible, but it doesn’t enhance the collection API out of the box.

The team which handles JSR-335 thought of a way to add default implementation to the interfaces, which gives an option for the implementor to override the method or to leave it as is. This way new APIs can be added to the Collection class without breaking the existing code and yet provide the full support of the closures to the existing code.

JSR 310

This section adds new Date and Time API to Java for avoiding any problems arise out of the existing java.util.Data classes.

Method References

Method references provide easy-to-read lambda expressions for methods that already have a name.

Other Changes

Removal of PermGen
JDK 8 includes Java Mission Control 5.3
Default Methods in the Java Programming Language are supported by the byte code instructions for method invocation.
Classes and interfaces have been added to the java.util.concurrent package.
JDBC 4.2 introduces new features.
Nashorn Javascript Engine
Repeating Annotations provide the ability to apply the same annotation type more than once to the same declaration or type use.
Apart from the above changes, there are ton of new features and changes introduced as part of the Java 8 release.

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