![]() Generally speaking, a responsive design is going to cost more than a non-responsive design. The most pertinent question is this - would I have preferred to see the desktop layout on my iPhone? The resounding answer is yes. I would argue that this is an example of typical responsive web design. After much scrolling I located the sidebar at the bottom of the page, but the navigation was nowhere to be seen.Įxponents of responsive design will argue that this is simply an example of poor responsive design (we’ll ignore the fact that this site was recently featured as having an “excellent” responsive web design). Here is the desktop display, complete with a top navigation menu and sidebar that includes the latest posts, snippets and a search box, amongst other things:Īnd now the responsive design on my iPhone:īoth the navigation menu and sidebar widgets have disappeared. It may be re-jigged and moved to the top or bottom of the page, but one thing is for sure - it will not be where you were expecting it. Unfortunately, if you visit one such blog that has been developed with a responsive design, that sidebar will almost definitely disappear. That basic design is repeated across literally millions of blogs because it is easy to navigate, and it is what people expect. There is a widely accepted “standard” design for blogs - header up top, content to one side, sidebar to the other. And yet that is exactly what responsive design can do. There is no worse cardinal sin in web design than confusing the end user. The first rule in usability 101 is to give the end user what they expect. But when it comes down to the vast majority of text-driven websites and blogs, I believe that responsive design is, quite frankly, a waste of time. Sites that rely heavily on images can also be good candidates for responsive design. Google Maps is an excellent example of this: Desktop Display Mobile display I am a fan of responsive (or alternative) design in certain situations - for example, when dealing with a web application whose desktop design could not practically be contained within a mobile device’s screen. I am about to explain why I think responsive design is not worth it under many circumstances. By the above definition, responsive design seems like a sensible move for web design. So from one platform to the next, the design of a site will adjust based upon the device’s particular resolution and/or screen size restraints. As a result, users across a broad range of devices and browsers will have access to a single source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling. Responsive Web Design essentially indicates that a web site is crafted to use Cascading Style Sheets 3 media queries…with fluid proportion-based grids, to adapt the layout to the viewing environment, and probably also use flexible images. Wikipedia describes responsive design as follows: Today I am going to explain why I believe that responsive design is not always the optimal solution for web design. Responsive design is seemingly universally accepted as the way forward, but I am far from convinced. Accessibility for mobile devices has become a huge priority for web developers. In 2014, more people will be using mobile devices to access the internet than desktop PCs. “ is even bigger than the PC revolution.” ~ Kevin Lynch, CTO, Adobe “We’re just now starting to think about mobile first and desktop second for a lot of our products.” ~ Kate Aronowitz, Design Director, Facebook Please keep that in mind before raging in the comment section. UPDATE (March 2018): Some of the comments are not taking into consideration that the market has greatly changed since 2012, and responsive today is practically mandatory. UPDATE (April 2014): After the huge debate this original post created, we decided to refine and build upon the original article, bearing in mind the thoughts of some very insightful feedback left by some commenters.
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