Technology is constantly changing and evolving. In the early days of the Internet, websites were meant to be viewed on one type of device and one type of device only: a desktop or laptop computer with a 13"-20" screen. And the screen was always a horizontal rectangle (what you Microsoft Word users would call "landscape") with more or less uniform proportions. But in today's technology-rich world, people view websites on a wide variety of devices. Some of these devices fit in the palm of their hand, and can be viewed either horizontally or vertically, with a screen that can be as little as two inches across. If you try to use your smartphone to view a website that was designed for a desktop computer, it might end up looking something like this: The problem was, all websites were designed to be viewed on a desktop or laptop computer, which meant that all the text and images looked unreadably small on a handheld phone, especially if you were looking at it in vertical (portrait) orientation. You had to pinch, zoom and swipe a lot to read anything on a website, which was really annoying. So web designers started creating two versions of their websites: It would look one way if you were looking at it on a desktop or laptop computer, and it would look totally different if you were looking at it on a smartphone. Suddenly all the text was readable. You didn't have to pinch and zoom quite so much. But technology is constantly changing and evolving. Samsung and other smartphone makers were making screens of all different sizes. Even Apple started doing this too. And then Apple introduced the iPad, and suddenly tablets were all the rage. Web designers couldn't create a different version of their websites for every single device that was coming out. It just wasn't feasible. And that's where the idea of responsive web design came into play.