Looks like Xara got it right - and Apple and Google agree...

[Big Frank]

Is adaptive better than responsive design?

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/09/01/...onsive-design/

[KarenC]

This is a great article, really clears things up between Responsive and Adaptive designs

Karen

[gwpriester]

Great article Frank. Thanks for posting the link.

When I wrote my First Look review of WD10, I stated that I felt a designer has more control over how the final site will look for each device using Variants instead of responsive design. I feel vindicated. And before some people bring it up, again, maybe soon Xara's developers can find a way to adapt the text when a visitor has changed her or his default text size settings.

Most responsive websites rearrange the text and graphics to fit the screen size with often unattractive results. What looks good full screen on your computer might not look so great on a tablet or smart phone when the text and graphics are reshuffled. Xara Web Designer 10 Premium takes a different approach to responsive websites. Instead of a reshuffle the content approach, Web Designer 10 Premium lets you design Variants of your website for specific display sizes, from full desktop browsers to mobile devices. These variants, which are actually different layouts of the same site are linked, so if you change the text or photos on the main site, the text and/or photos on the variant or variants changes as well. The browser automatically loads the right variant. —Web Designer 10 FIRST LOOK

[Cloud]

Both have their pros and cons, it boils down to whether xara with their offering and adobe with muse can stick with adaptive and make them better; the biggest drawback to adaptive is maintenance, with responsive you are changing just one site, with adaptive it is spread over a minimum of two sites, so the challenge is to make it easier to make changes. Although adobe themselves have not done so yet, a number of companies have created code which allows text and images to act in a responsive manner within the fixed width of the site.