Adaptive Design is a web design technique of making customized pages available to the user by detecting the required size of the window and serving predesigned version of the page or pages that are best suited for that particular view.

Adaptive design should not be confused with Responsive Design where existing pages are designed and programmed in a way that allows to change the layout, resize or hide the elements without reloading the page, or serving any special version of the page.

Adaptive approach to web design might feel like a lot of up front work, but it offers flexibility of serving a completely different set of pages to mobile users tailored to on-the-go experience and avoiding overhead of loading unnecessary information.