Tried & Tested Ways to Create Responsive Layouts in React Native

You must be aware of how certain apps are only compatible with either Android or iOS. And there is no doubt that Native Apps have been on the rise, the only issue is that it takes a lot of time and effort to construct conventional native platforms. Software development firms choose React Native since it facilitates a quicker and easier method of creating native apps.

As the numbers show –

70% of the workforce will use remote offices by the year 2025. One common strategy for finding qualified remote developers is to use outsourcing. It frees up time and resources that can be better spent on growing the company’s core competencies.

In 2020, the worldwide market for IT outsourcing was estimated at 342.9 billion USD, and by 2027, that number is projected to rise by more than 10.2 billion USD.

Responsive Layouts in React Native; An Introduction!

Any web designer or Front-end developer worth their salt knows how crucial it is to manage responsiveness in an application, especially in an age where new electronic gadgets hit the market every few months. While the web development community as a whole has worked to create several libraries for controlling responsiveness and removing duplicate boilerplate code, these efforts are limited to web applications themselves. In this piece, we’ll go into the question of how to best handle responsiveness in mobile applications.

We need to consider a wide variety of devices and screen sizes when developing websites and web applications today.

Typically, a UI designer will craft a magnificent layout that fits within a 1440px wide device screen, and from there, we’ll start creating. When trying to render that layout on several screens, things sometimes become a little off. Finally, let’s talk about typefaces.

Aligning some ideas and prior understanding is important, so let’s do that;

• Responsive designs adapt to the viewing device’s width and height. They don’t rearrange the elements, they just make room for them.

• In adaptive layouts, items reposition themselves using media queries so that they fill the viewport regardless of the user’s screen size.

You need an outside layer that provides styles to help lay out your site to take any React application above the level of individual components. But contrary to popular belief, achieving even the most rudimentary levels of responsiveness in an application is as simple as using some basic CSS and a few React Component packages.

Most mobile apps are rather compact, but accommodating users with varying screen sizes and resolutions remains a difficult task. Even within the Android ecosystem, there is a wide variety of phone sizes and screen resolutions to accommodate; adding iOS to the mix merely adds another layer of complexity.

The time it takes to create and make the application look smooth can be pretty long, even though we can design cross-platform software quickly utilising React Native.

Is There a Tried and True Method for Developing a Fully Responsive React Native App?

Creating a web app that works well across devices is challenging. If you want your website to look good on any device, no matter what it is, you need to learn the best practices for responsive applications, the best approaches for creating a successful responsive web design, and how to use these in your React Native app.

When designing a responsive app, it is crucial to employ the practice of responsive web design.

No matter the size of your screen or the device you’re using, you’ll be able to craft an experience that’s easy to use and navigate.

A few of the most fundamental rules for developing a functional responsive web design are as follows;

-Ensuring compatibility with a wide range of screen resolutions and sizes

-Using movable grids in website design

-Making use of media queries Sizing fonts with relative units

Implementing Responsive Layouts in React Native Applications

The open-source toolkit React Native facilitates the development of JavaScript-based mobile applications.

The key perk of React Native is that it simplifies and speeds up the process of creating native apps by letting programmers use JavaScript. 

With React Native, programmers can cut down on the amount of code they have to create, which in turn saves them time.

Furthermore, they can create cross-platform apps that run on both iOS and Android using a single set of code.

Let’s talk about how to make our apps more user-friendly, and polished and integrate responsive layouts;

Aspect Ratio

An image’s aspect ratio is defined by the proportion between its horizontal and vertical dimensions. It’s the best property for adjusting the size of an element with dimensions that aren’t defined, and it’s only available in React.

When our image is too large for the screen, we can utilise this attribute to fix it. The simplest way to put this into practice is with the 1:1 ratio. When set to this value, the image fills the entire display window without going off the edges.

Identifying the Platform

The development environment provided by React is fantastic for creating apps for both iOS and Android. However, because of the varied native capabilities of each platform, we must render a unique set of components for each device. Here’s where the Platform API comes in handy by revealing the device’s operating system.

In general, our components have a consistent appearance across both Android and iOS devices. However, there are a few cases in which our styles work perfectly on Android but may be distorted in iOS, and vice versa. The Platform API that comes with React can be used to deal with such situations.

It’s built into React by default, and it tells us things like the device’s operating system and version, whether it’s an iPad or a TV, etc.

When we rely on a platform-specific functionality of an element, for instance, we run into this problem frequently.

See the following for the code;

Adjustable Font Size

To keep the utmost responsiveness, letter sizes are resized automatically based on the pixel density of the device. If a piece of text occupies 50% of a small screen, it will look cluttered in the component, whereas on a widescreen, it will look much more sparse.

With PixelRatio, we can find out the pixel density of the device and use that to determine the appropriate scaling factor. Any element that strongly relies on the getFontScale method should undergo certain calculations to account for the user’s preferred font size scaling factor, which is the ratio used to calculate the absolute font size. 

Take a look at the code sample below;

Employing Flexbox as a Layout Modality

Flexbox allows you to horizontally or vertically stack elements with only one dimension, resizing and moving them as necessary to make the most efficient use of the available space. With a few notable differences,

React’s the default value of display is flex, which implements a behaviour very similar to that of the web’s Flexbox. Here, the axis defaults to the column position, align-content is set to flex-start rather than stretch, flex-shrink is set to 0 rather than 1, and the flex parameter only accepts a single integer.

Flexbox will figure out how big your gadget is and scale the part up or down automatically. The syntax is identical to that of web-based CSS; however, the default flex-direction, in this case, is “column.” Flex, flex-direction, justify-content, align-items, and align-self are some of the most useful attributes that will do much of the heavy lifting for you.

Example:

To illustrate, imagine you need a container to fill the full viewport and align its child elements horizontally in the middle. You should also leave some blank space around them so the user interface doesn’t look cluttered.

Margin and Padding Values That Are Standardised

Having a clear set of values for spacing your items makes your work a lot easier, even if it doesn’t sound as technical as the preceding points.

All of your application’s elements will be symmetrical and sharp if you use uniform spacing settings, and you’ll be able to make modifications from a single location.

Screen Resolution

Unfortunately, there is no API available in React Native that allows us to determine the specifics of a device, such as its type or screen size. The Dimensions API, however, makes it simple to retrieve the display’s dimensions.

See the following for the code;

Using useWindowDimensions to acquire the width and height of the window eliminates the need to constantly add event listeners for the screen’s size, making it the preferred method since the introduction of Hooks.

Scaling of Images

We can pass an array of source image objects, which includes the source, width, and height of objects, to the React Image component. 

This will allow the component to select an appropriate image from the array based on the dimensions of its container.

The width of the container on the layout can be measured with PixelRatio for further customization. To convert DIPs (Density Independent Pixels) to actual device pixels, use getPixelSizeForLayoutSize.

For a clearer illustration, consider this;

Position of the Display on the Device

Despite what was said above, our primary concern with this issue is ensuring that our user interface remains intact when switching between portrait and landscape orientations. No event listener implementation is required when using hooks; instead, conditional logic can be written to make aesthetic adjustments based on the current orientation of the device.

The Percentage Method

Utilising percentages rather than absolute values allows us to have our elements occupy as little real estate as possible; for example, if a View is only allowed to occupy 10% of the screen, it will only occupy that much real estate.

However, there is one negative aspect. Some properties cannot be assigned % values in React, unlike on the web. Among these are border-radius and borderWidth. In spite of the fact that we can use percentages with other attributes, the fact that we can’t use them with certain properties is a barrier to achieving optimum responsiveness.

Using percentages is another method for guaranteeing that your components will display consistently across all devices. You can specify the percentage of the screen a component should occupy rather than a specific size in pixels.

So, our component will always look the same regardless of the size of the screen, as it will automatically resize itself to fill the available space.

Key Takeaway- 

You can always find fresh combinations to make your UI robust across devices and OS by utilising the above-mentioned tools and ideas. Find a mixture that works reliably and consistently.

Keep in mind that you must use inline styles to take advantage of the orientation. Because the styles are only loaded once, we already know how to force a rerender of the layout when the device is rotated. Because of this, inline styles should be used for any elements whose positioning changes as a result of rotation.

Struggling to Find the Best IT Company For Responsive Layouts in React?

React Native offers a wide variety of advantages, the benefits of the building using React Native include a shorter time to market, higher quality, and the ability to simulate a Native app’s behaviour without writing one from scratch. But your business needs will dictate the technological stack you select. 

Hiring top-notch React Native developers are no less than a marathon in itself, and to back up its reputation as a trustworthy mobile app development company, BootesNull boasts a talented staff of React Native programmers. So, we can provide you with top-tier cross-platform mobile apps for your business needs.

Furthermore, our duty to you does not end with the delivery of your app. We are here to adapt to the shifting demands of your business. We guarantee the timely, problem-free implementation of all requested enhancements to the development process. 

Set up a consultation with our IT pros to discuss your requirements if you have an idea for an app and are ready to move forward.