What Does Responsive Web Design Mean?

With a variety of screen sizes and an ever growing range of high-tech mobile devices being used to browse the internet (e.g. tablet, laptop and smartphones) there is now more pressure than ever before to come up with better websites that look great and work well no matter what device they are being viewed on.
In the past, web design was based on layouts that are fixed. While a common screen width of 1024 pixels is considered quite a safe size to use for any website, it does not work well on very smartphone screens and can result to websites looking a little lost on large desktop screens.