The days when people had to take out their laptops or sit in front of their desktop to research on the web or do some online shopping are long gone. An increasing number of people are opting to use their mobile phones and tablets for internet surfing, shopping, and so on. As a result, it has become crucial to design a website in a manner that is perfectly compatible with discerning mobile devices and carry out its responsiveness testing.
A responsive website basically would have a flexible and agile layout that adjusts automatically as per diverse screen sizes.
No matter whether a person is using a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone to check out a website, a responsive design shall make sure that the web app scales and resizes itself according to the size of the screen it is being viewed from.
As per reports, a huge chunk of the global web traffic comes from mobile devices. Hence, unless your website is able to render well on all mobile devices, you are quite likely to lose out on a good amount of web traffic.
Article Breakdown
Advantage of responsive web design
By having a responsive web design, you can make sure that all your web pages and content can be seamlessly viewed across various devices and screen resolutions. This would invariably imply that your web visitors would be easily able to navigate and explore your website with absolutely minimal scrolling and resizing.
Modern website visitors aim at enjoying a hassle-free and smooth online experience, and they are quite prone to losing their patience and leaving a website if they have to constantly zoom in and out to check out the content featured there.
Websites with responsive design are likely to load faster on various devices and browsers as well, as they tend to feature fluid and agile grids and images that facilitate faster loading of web pages. Contemporary web users are likely to abandon a page in case it does not load within a few seconds of clicking it, making swift loading times extremely important.
Among the other things, one of the biggest advantages of having a responsive web design is that it significantly helps in augmenting the search engine rankings of a website. The responsiveness of a website is a key factor taken into consideration by Google as a determiner of their rankings in the search engine results. Hence, if a website is not responsive, it shall be placed lower in the search engine results automatically.
Testing a locally hosted website
To make sure that your web app is compilable with diverse mobile devices and is able to effectively meet the requirements of contemporary web users, it is important to test responsiveness of your locally hosted website before it goes live. The methods available to test a locally hosted website, however, are limited. You may use developer tools present in your browser or certain online website responsive testing tools available for this purpose. The following pointers would shed better light on them:
- Developer tools featured in the browser: Toggle device toolbar featured in the developer tools of browsers would be among the most easily accessed responsive testing tools for locally hosted websites. Both Firefox and Chrome browsers have this tool, and it can be accessed with ease simply by pressing the F12 key on the keyword.
You would find this tool to be present with the same as the Toggle Device toolbar in the case of the Chrome browser. On the other hand, when it comes to Firefox, this tool is commonly defined as the Responsive Design mode.
As you press the F12 key while using the Mozilla Firefox browser, you shall find the developer tool section appearing in front of you on the screen.
From there, you shall have to click on the option of Responsive Design mode, subsequent to which, the browser shall end up displaying the mobile version of your website. Then from the top menu, you shall be required to select the Responsive option, so see all the versions of devices that are integrated with the browser, such as Apple iPads, Samsung Galaxy, and so on.
You may even opt to choose the specific device to test the responsive design of your website. This shall allow you to gain a better understanding of how your website shall render across diverse platforms after coming live.
You may even change the resolution of the screen according to your requirements, in order to see to it how your web pages shall render across multiple screen sizes. In addition to getting a proper insight on the responsiveness of a website, doing so provides good stimulation for mobile devices.
While they do mimic the real devices, these simulators do not replicate any kind of hardware requirements of the device.
In addition to the viewport, in case you desire to mimic the hardware requirements of a mobile device, then it shall be a good idea for you to go for browser emulators.
- LT browser: The LT browser can be an extremely effective tool for testing the responsiveness of your locally hosted website across multiple mobile devices. Having a live mobile view debugging feature, this tool also aids in identifying bugs in your website, allowing you to get rid of them as fast as possible.
Through the LT browser, you get the chance to test the responsiveness of a website across more than forty mobile and desktop devices and browsers. This testing tool also provides you with the chance to add custom devices as per your requirements for responsiveness testing. Hence, you are able to perform responsive testing of your locally hosted website with just about any mobile device, through this platform.
With the help of the LT browser, you can additionally compare the responsiveness of the mobile version of your web applications across several devices through a side-by-side view, which makes the entire process much smoother and easier to carry out.
The Scroll sync feature present in the LT browser allows you to sync two devices by the movement on the primary device, and hence you do not have to go back and forth while testing on multiple devices.
It also supports hot reloading, through which you can see your changes instantly in real-time. As you save your react code in your code editor, the local URL shall reload in LT Browser automatically.
There is also an inbuilt network simulation feature present in the LT Browser that shall enable you to test your website on low to high network profiles. Through this, you can even test your websites on an offline mode, to check how they reflect to the end-users.
The debugging feature that is in-built in the LT browser additionally aids you to validate the fixes made on the locally hosted WebPages on the go.
In case you desire to share this testing reporting with any of your team members or colleagues, then you simply have to mark the bugs during the testing period, and share them directly with others with the help of various project management tools like Asana and Jira.
One of the best aspects of performing responsive testing of your locally hosted website through the LT browser is that you shall not be required to install any additional framework or utility software in this method.
- LambdaTest Tunnel: Apart from the LT Browser, the LambdaTest Tunnel can also be used for the purpose of testing your locally hosted website.
This tool enables you to connect your local system with the LambdaTest servers through an SSH-based integration tunnel, so as to test the responsiveness of your web design across an extensive combination of operating systems, browsers, and devices.
It largely acts as a distinctive secure shell tunnel that can also be used to test Python, HTML, PHP, CSS, and various other web files that are saved locally. Moreover, with this tool, you shall not be required to execute any common from the terminal, you just have to establish a connection between the LambdaTest server and your OS, with the help of an underpass GUI.
As a secure connection is established with your locally hosted web pages through the tunnel, you can get the chance to test its responsiveness across two thousand browsers, devices, and operating systems.
LambdaTest Tunnel would be a great option for you if you desire to check your website’s responsiveness across several browsers and operating systems. It is also packed with multiple added functionalities and features, making the entire process extremely easy.
Choosing to perform responsive testing of your locally hosted website through LambdaTest
Having a responsive website is the new of the hour for all businesses in the modern world. Choosing to perform responsive testing of your locally hosted website before it goes live would be a great option for you to ensure the user-friendliness of your web app across several devices, as well as avoiding several future issues.
Even though you may always test the website after it goes live or when you have to implement certain changes to it later on, it would be a prudent move to carry out the testing procedure before in order to be properly prepared to solve any kind of issues that may crop up.
The emulators and simulators of discerning real mobile devices would be the most proffered way of testing the responsiveness of your website, and such features can be availed with ease through the LT browser provided by LambdaTest. You can perform responsive testing of your website across multiple operating systems, devices, browsers, and their versions through it, making it a one-stop-destination for web app testing.
You won’t require any tunnel or extension while using testing your website through the LT browser. You simply have to type your localhost address, and subsequently, get the chance to check your local website across more than 25 devices.