Hi Paul and Nick, I have now read all three articles to which you two have provided links.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/web-designer/what-is-the-difference-between-responsive-vs-adaptive-web-design/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14831530/responsive-design-vs-adaptive-design http://www.symphonyonline.co.uk/design/item/responsive-layout-vs-adaptive-layout-whats-the-difference If those are truly representative of what adaptive and responsive design are generally conceived to be, then, in my view as a software engineer who not only designs applications ranging from n-tier client-server applications through stand-alone desktop applications and services (in linux implemented as daemons), to web applications, but who also directs junior engineers as to technologies to use, functional requirements and how these are to be met, I regard focussing on an alleged distinction between adaptive and responsive design. As it happens, in my own practice, I mix and match elements of the favourite techniques of advocates of both, based on my definition of the application's functional requirements, the flexibility and maintainability of the code base, and the cost of development (in both time and dollars). In short, they are both merely subsets of what I taught my staff as adaptive design. I do not deny that there may be differences, but those differences are trivial at best, and in the larger scheme of things, do not matter. I am not one who cares what label gets applied to a given practice as long as communication is clear and the job actually gets done in a timely manner. To be blunt, I would tear a strip off any of my staff that wasted time I am paying for by arguing about the difference between adaptive vs responsive design (or similar trivia best left to the academic world) instead of discussing or analyzing what really matters, which is how we're going to finish the project at hand in a way that both supports all defined functional requirements and keeps cost and time to delivery/deployment at a minimum without sacrificing our ability to refactor or extend the application in question in the future, and then, of course, getting it done. Cheers Ted
