The mobile space continues to grow at breakneck pace. Many websites are now seeing upwards of 20-30% of their web traffic coming from mobile devices. This includes both mobile phones (cellphones if you live in the US) and tablets (such as the iPad and others).

Reacting to this, many organisations are starting to deliver mobile versions of their websites. For the early movers, the question however, was what to deliver to mobiles, and how?

The majority of the web industry has now settled on an approach called ‘responsive design’.

In simple terms, a responsive design detects what type of device is being used to visit the website, and how big its screen is.

The display of the site is then adapted to match the device. This may mean dropping sidebars on smaller devices, or switching from a three-column layout to a two-column layout on tablets, and a one-column layout on mobiles.

There is now a whole industry around responsive web design, and many variations on approaches.

Lagging somewhat behind, mobile is now becoming a big issue within the enterprise. Increasingly, staff in the field, as well as those sitting at desks, are expecting to be able to use both phones and tablets to do their work.

For intranet teams, is responsive design the right approach for intranets, as for websites? This article outlines the options, and discusses possible approaches.

[July article by James Robertson, read the full article]