Mobile first design means you design for small screens first and then add styles for larger screens.
Instead of shrinking a desktop website for mobile, you build a clean mobile layout and expand it for tablets and desktops.
This approach creates faster, cleaner, and more user-friendly websites.
The base styles are written for mobile screens.
Larger screen styles are added using min-width media queries.
On mobile, the layout is stacked vertically.
On larger screens, it becomes a horizontal layout automatically.
This is how modern navigation menus are built.
Mobile users get a simple stacked menu, while desktop users get a horizontal menu.
Benefits of mobile first design
- Faster loading on mobile
- Cleaner layouts
- Better user experience
- Easier to scale for larger screens
Mobile first also applies to typography.
Start with readable text for mobile and scale up for larger screens.
Practice task
Create a page and:
- Write base styles for mobile
- Add a min-width media query
- Change layout and colors for desktop
- Test on different screen sizes
Next lesson
In the next page, you will learn how to build responsive navigation menus.