If you are a web designer, a blogger or a webmaster, you must have heard about the term responsive design. It mentions the design that can be viewed nicely on any device with any screen size, even it is iPad, iPhone, laptop or any Android phones with different sizes. The responsive theme will help readers easier to read your site, they won’t need to zoom in/out or scroll left/right to read texts.
Moreover, you don’t need any more complicated and expensive plugin to create a mobile version for your WordPress blog. All of us know that the number of smartphone and tablet users is rising steeply and expected to catch the number of Internet users with computer and laptops within the next few years. Therefore, creating a flexible layout for your WordPress blog plays an important part in developing it. Just over 1 year ago, the number of mobile visitors to my site takes just about 2% but now the percentage has increased to nearly 20%, surprised?
The responsive themes has become very popular in the last year and is promised to be the future of WordPress blogs’ design. It was not easy to find a responsive layout for WordPress on the Internet because it takes more time to create and people don’t want to give it away for free. A few months ago, I could find just a few free and low-quality responsive themes, but the situation has changed dramatically as premium WordPress theme providers joined the potential game. We can tell here Elegant Themes and StudioPress, they are moving toward responsive design and producing very impressive themes. You can check them out below.
Responsive Elegant Themes
Elegant Themes also introduced its first responsive theme, the HandHeld theme. It was built specifically to improve mobile users’ experience. The layout is adjusted properly on any size phone, tablet or when switching between portrait and landscape mode.
Another responsive theme from Elegant Themes is the Evolution.
Genesis 1.8 Responsive Themes
StudioPress is implementing a thorough change as they will integrate the responsive design into the default parent theme of Genesis Framework 1.8. Here is the sample of the new Agency theme and how it will look on iPhone and iPad.
I think this is a great change by those theme provider as we can forget about creating mobile version for our WordPress blogs now. I will move back to Genesis themes immediately when the framework is upgraded to version 1.8. Will you adapt to the change?
Drew says
Nov 17, 2011 at 10:22 pmHey Tuan,
Awesome work on the list, I’ve used Agency a couple of times and really liked it.
Just wanted to say – I created a responsive theme built off ZURB’s Foundation Framework. It’d be great to know what you think of it?
GitHub: http://www.github.com/drewsymo/foundation
Demo: http://www.drewsymo.com
Cheers!
Tuan Do says
Nov 19, 2011 at 11:06 amHi Drew,
I haven’t heard about that framework. Just checked out your responsive theme but it seems to be quite simple and similar to the Genesis’s sample theme demo: http://demo.studiopress.com/
I guess the design needs to be enhanced to attract more users.
Amit Kumar says
Nov 23, 2011 at 3:00 pmNice collection of wordpress themes
neo says
Nov 27, 2011 at 1:53 amevolution is great looking minimal theme. I think themify.me release many responsive themes so far
Mac says
Mar 19, 2013 at 3:38 pmResponsive themes are definitely the present and the future.We must admit that!