CSS3 Media Queries For A Responsive Website Template

Common device breakpoints

At this point you have probably already heard about responsive web design and how every website needs to compatible to work well and look good across multiple devices. If so, you heard right!

With a @media query, you can write different CSS code for different screen sizes or for different devices, which is very useful when making web pages with responsive design. You can also have different layout when a user resizes a browser window up or down to a certain width, or height.

Responsive web design is vital for any successful web project and CSS media queries are vital for a successful responsive website. So to make things a little easier for you here are all the main CSS media queries need for a responsive website.

CSS Media Queries For a Responsive Website

This first piece of code is the responsive meta tag and you should put this in the head section of your HTML.

/*Responsive Meta Tag*/
<br /><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"><br />

This next section of code is all CSS. These are the standard CSS @media queries that you can use to edit your website content to make them display correctly on the different types of devices.

/*Responsive Styles*/


/* Smartphones (portrait) ---------------- */
@media only screen 
and (max-width : 320px)
{
/* Add Your CSS Styling Here */
}

/* Smartphones (landscape) ---------------- */
@media only screen 
and (min-width : 321px)
and (max-width : 767px)
{
/* Add Your CSS Styling Here */
}

/* Tablets (portrait) -------------------- */
@media only screen 
and (min-device-width : 768px) 
and (max-device-width : 1024px) 
and (orientation : portrait)
{
/* Add Your CSS Styling Here */
}


/* Tablets (landscape) ------------------- */
@media only screen 
and (min-device-width : 768px) 
and (max-device-width : 1024px) 
and (orientation : landscape)
{   
/* Add Your CSS Styling Here */
}

/* Old Desktops and laptops ------------------ */
@media only screen 
and (min-width : 1025px) 
{
/* Add Your CSS Styling Here */
}

/* Desktops ------------------ */
@media only screen 
and (min-width : 1201px) 
{
/* Add Your CSS Styling Here */
}

By inserting the relevant CSS code in each section you can have elements of your web page responding to the screen size or device orientation of your user. Take some time to experiment with this code and a helpful tip to see your website on different screen sizes is to use Google' Resizer website.

More web tips, templates and tutorials are available here.