This only holds true if A: your user has never seen a mobile site before (and if they are on a phone thats true for about ~0.5s), or B: if your responsive design is poorly implemented. A well designed site will be intuitive.
2 - It Costs More and Takes Longer
Let's assume that you have customers that will use your site on a non desktop device. If that is the case - you are making users use the wrong tool for the job. A site that takes advantage of the desktop experience will not work as well on mobile. Creating a tailored experience for them will absolutely increase conversion (if your site converts anyone to anything), and at the very least, reduce frustration and eye strain. I can't speak for everyone, but the month or two of part time work it took one of my jobs to add a mobile site was paid for by the increase in sales not too much long after. Not only that, but its now built in. When the kindle fire was released, we saw great numbers on that device. Why? because the responsive design was well done and fit that device's screen great. Saying that it 'costs more' is incredibly short sighted.
3.Non-Responsive Designs Usually Work
'working' doesn't mean it can't work better.
all text websites work, too. But we use images because they enhance the experience.
4. There is Often No Load Time Benefit
All this is saying is that a lot of sites are done badly. This has nothing to do with the style of responsive design in general. Tools like Modernizr allow you to optionally load a number of resources that would otherwise not load.
5. It’s a Compromise
Of course? All design is compromise. The goal is to make the compromise in the favor of the customer.
Responsive design is not a silver bullet, and not always a good idea, depending on the site - but this article is /really
/ weak.
So many people talk about responsive design taking longer and being not worth the effort.... That's true if you start with the desktop and try and work your way backwards to the small screen, which is how a lot of designers look at it, I think.
If you take a progressive enhancement approach and work your way up from low-end mobile to full-featured desktop, the process is 100x easier and the end result is, in my experience, an overall cleaner and more stable code base that makes for better performance across all devices/platforms.
To start, regardless of whether the experiment pays off long-term, that does not negate the fact that it does require extra design and development time. There is much more code to handle, regardless of whether you use a framework or build it bespoke. Additionally, whether you design for mobile first, or last, there is more design time required. Period.
Second, both the author and OP have lumped 100% of all websites together, and generalized the argument. Sure, responsive may be worthwhile in some cases (as the post misses), but there are many cases where it isn't worthwhile.
My argument for using responsive is that yes, it's worthwhile, if and when the return is there. As a freelancer, this means I must be getting paid for the extra work. As a company owner, this means that we must see value from the resource spend, which could be in the form of better UX, more eyeballs, or more profits.
I would argue 1 even in the case of users that have seen mobile sites before. Unless the desktop version of the site is completely unusable on a mobile device (which to me points to bad design anyway), I've hated mobile site experiences... the reality is that good mobile site design is the exception rather than the rule. Take eBay for example. The mobile site makes me feel like I'm on WAP and not a device with more power than the Space Shuttle.
On that note, I'm really curious what "continue to full site" clickthroughs are across the internet. I could be the only one thinking this way.
My personal experience is that more often than not I end up searching for the "Desktop version" link. Especially on websites I'm familiar with. It would appear that "poorly implemented" is the norm. Bottom line: I suffer.
And while modern phones have become rather good at zooming on the content (which does not mean the text gets big enough, far from it, I regularly encounter blogs I can't read without using readability other other equivalent tools, because the font is too small even zoomed in) scrolling is still rather fiddly, especially one-handed: it's not rare that the scrolling "starts wrong" and I end up decentered from the column I want to read, and now I have to fiddle with positioning and zooming to get back to reading.
Biggest proof that this article is wrong? I'm on my phone reading the blog post and the site doesn't scale for my screen width and it is so annoying to read because I have to keep scrolling left and right to see all of the text. I got so frustrated I didnt even continue reading the article and I left the site. That is what will happen with users when a site doesn't display properly for their device, it's a fact.
Yep, the inline images seem to have disabled my mobile browser's magic reflow thing. On the other hand, that suggests that the article should have narrower rows of text even on desktop (95 characters per line is on the high side of recommended widths for legibility; not unreasonable, but suboptimal), and usually I prefer to read desktop sites since zooming is actually a nice way to navigate around content - better than dealing with usually buggy and often limited mobile sites. In the example in the post, I would have much preferred to double tap once to read the text on Cats who Code than to have to scroll all the way down to find awkwardly laid out sidebar content.
Good point, but of course installing a decent browser is the counter argument. Admittedly my 3 year old Nokia may not be very representative, but its Opera Mini version solves that problem beautifully. My hunch is that it uses heuristics to find the main text area (which nearly every site has), and adjusts the css of that block to $SCREEN_WIDTH. It's been able to do this ever since I started using it in 2009. Now, I've lived under a rock since then, but are you really saying that your mobile browser doesn't do something like that?
I believe it's such browsers that the author was referring to.
Still, admittedly, using heuristics to patch the css shouldn't really be a browser's task, so your point holds.
"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."
Note that the author is a wordpress blogger. He may be referring to traditional web sites more than the average HN'er, to who the entire web consists of apps (and a few blogs over there in the corner). I believe that his point has a lot more merits when considering web sites than when considering web apps.
For example, my favourite online newspapers on my cellphone are those which don't default to some half-arsed mobile layout.
I just hate not having a choice. So many sites now make it impossible to see the non-mobile version, unless you have a browser that lets you fake the User-Agent, and mobile Safari isn't one of those.
This is exceptionally irritating when the browser is more than capable of displaying the full site properly, and the mobile site doesn't have all the features of the regular site.
Continuing a bit off topic on my rant, another terrible UX is finding an article you want to read in a search, tapping the link, and finding out that article isn't available in the mobile site, and simultaneously not giving an option for the full site. Taking it even further, some sites force you to download the mobile app, and only then do you find out the article isn't available in that app! I'm going to stop now - I'm getting so mad just thinking about it.
Personally, I do not want to see a sidebar, taking up a third of the screen, on my smartphone. I find the example that he considers fine quite unusable and would not read that on a smartphone.
Double-tap on the text. Like the article says. It really does work, quite often way better than attempts at responsive design. And then there's the reader functionality in my phone.
The issue isn't, I think, responsive design itself, it's that it's not so trivial to make it work better than device-based workarounds.
Wouldn't that make you think that we should revisit the sidebar to find a more effective way to navigate rather than simply telling the user that you shouldn't have any options?
Didn't I read somewhere that Steve Jobs was against mobile versions of websites saying that the iPhone was designed to display the same website that you see on your computer?
I know that as a consumer, I get annoyed when a mobile version of a site comes up and the first thing I do is check for the "Desktop Site" link. I just don't trust that the developer has included everything in the mobile site that the desktop site includes.
A well designed site will look and act great on a desktop, iOS device and Android device without extra work.
A surprising (or unsurprising perhaps) number of negative responses to this article. I do see why people are so generally defensive of responsive design, I mean it just seems like the right thing to do, it fits with what we wish the commonly accepted wisdom should be.
That said, building anything more interactive than a blog layout with it is actually very hard. It is time consuming, there is tedious work to do to tweak for each individual mobile browser quirk, and it may not be the best thing for a startup to invest time in. "Mobile first" certainly sounds nice, but "desktop first" is probably a faster more efficient route to product-market fit.
So I'd just recommend caution in how strongly we parrot "responsive/adaptive all the things" as common wisdom without discussing the possible downsides. It isn't black and white.
I agree, responsive is challenging and always worth a conversation before starting. However, his arguments in this article have no place in any meaningful discussion. He essentially puts the blinders on and claims there's nothing wrong and mobile design is unnecessary.
Preface by saying responsive design _can_ be worth it.
That said: If your mobile phone has so much trouble displaying a 960px width static centered website (the norm on the current web), so much so, that your mobile browser demands a different design, then I posit your design isn't broken, some mobile browsers are broken.
I expect that in the near future, when resolutions get upped and mobile browsing experiences advance, responsive design becomes more and more unnecessary. To me responsive design for mobile devices seems more of a band-aid for less capable devices. Less capable devices with post-stamp sized browsers, we will soon drop in the same pile as IE6 -- Because soon we can expect any browser on any device to be able to display a 960px width static centered design just fine, without responsive design. If responsive designs stays necessary, to me it would mean the failure of mobile hardware and software manufacturers.
The basic problem with this post is that it contains zero data about user engagement. One guy can project his own opinion about how he thinks his non-responsive site looks fine on mobile, so clearly everyone else will too, while I can project my own personal experience that I tend to find myself spending more time reading mobile-optimized blogs on my phone, so clearly everyone else will too.
It's been said a million times around these parts, but I guess I get to be the one to say it here: Get some data! Do some A/B testing! Check your bounces and pages per visits and time on site from mobile devices, then try a responsive design and see if they improve (technically, you should split and do both at the same time). What works for one site may not work for another. But projecting generalized statements with no data to back them up doesn't move anyone forward.
Simply put, Responsive design is only worth it if you do it correctly. Just because your site scales with browser dimensions does not mean that it scales with user expectations. There are a few rules to follow:
1) Test on as many devices as possible, even if you are using a tested framework. Your design is going to be different that what the framework author(s) have done.
2) Be agile and responsive to your users. Just because your responsive design is amazing doesn't mean that the user experience will match.
3) Catalog your "must have" features, such as search and navigation. Make sure that these "must haves" are present and accessible across all your designs. Loosing navigation on mobile means dead ends for your users.
4) Related to #3, keep your experience consistent across your devices. Perhaps mobile users do need a different site, but don't loose the core purpose of the site. Mobile shopping carts need to function as similar as possible to their non-mobile versions.
5) Responsive !== Mobile (sometimes). Just because the design scales with browser size doesn't mean it's ready for mobile.
6) Use a framework whenever possible. I don't care how smart you are, it's smarter to use a tested framework at least once. Even if this means that you eventually build your own, it will give you an idea of the conventions to follow.
7) Frameworks are awesome, but none are launch ready out of the box.
8) Find your dimension breakpoints, and what they'll do to your design. Don't go too crazy though, you don't need to design for every conceivable screen dimension.
This article lost me the moment he quoted wikipedia to explain responsive design. This is not 8th grade, come up with your own definition if you're such an expert.
The rest of article was downhill too. Claiming the full site looks fine on your iPhone is akin to saying "It works on my machine!".
It's pretty much a waste of time from top to bottom.
Yeah as a full-time frontend developer this article doesn't hold much water. Responsive designs are a quick and relatively cheap way to get a mobile compatible site going. It help decrease bounce rates and increase conversions as well.
The author fails to take into consideration tablets, e-readers, smart TVs and every other device, currently available or in the distant future, that will have a web browser.
"It Defeats User Expectation"
So let's keep everything exactly the same?
Responsive design to me is progress, eventually we'll either come up with good practices for working with it or maybe something else will take it's place. The way we access the internet is in constant flux and the 960 magazine layout has many pit falls in terms of usability outside of desktop sized screens.
So would you rather piss off those on small screens, or go the responsive route even if it is not optimal for the small screen.
I always wonder how long it will take for tablets and phones to be so ubiquitous that this debate will become moot and you target mobile from the get-go?
As a web developer, I find that implementing a responsive design to be a fairly and rewarding task. I think it is worth the efforts given the screen variances of web-enabled devices. However, not all websites/services are fit for a responsive model. Something like a Google Maps or gmail will benefit more from a separate mobile site. While a Hacker News could easily go responsive.
This feels like it's arguing for limitations, and i'm never a fan of that.
The argument that responsive design is not worth it, because some people do bad responsive design (or even most do bad responsive design) is pretty odd. To carry that same sort of argument out into anything in life would land you in serious life lessons.
Yes, responsive design takes more time (no matter how you slice it). And, yes, sometimes it's not needed. Those should just be obvious to any developer worth their salt. Like everything considered when developing a website - weigh it all, figure out what's best for the project and it's users. Most definitely - time/money will be a factor in those considerations sometimes.
All I can think is the writer of this article hasn't seen how powerful responsive design can be?
I too am having lots of doubts on responsive design. I've yet to see an example of a significantly popular and non-trivial website implement responsive in a convincing way.
Anyone arguing that "they're just doing a bad responsive design" I think it missing the point. Responsive almost means it has to be bad in some way, because it is a compromise of design between 2 very different devices, not just in screen size but in use cases.
The "right" approach, is the same thing we've been taught for 50 years, separating code from presentation. Building a robust API for your backend data makes the front-end presentation much easier and cheaper, so you can afford to make front-ends tailored for whatever you need.
Give me a usable website over one that "meets my expectations", dammit! As much as I like the desktop version of let's say www.theverge.com, I can honestly say it wouldn't work on a mobile at all. It would be too cluttered, and the links too small to tap.
On a side note, is there a mobile version of Hacker News out there?
Link bait and wrong on every point. This article is a waste of time to read.
On each point...
1. Where's the proof? Where's the research? The usability studies? The group surveys? There is NO evidence presented to support this point. It's just opinion and conjecture. Moving on.
2. Any actual numbers on ROI or expected ROI? Nope. Moving on again.
3. Again, any usability studies to back this up? No. Next!
4. Research? Numbers? Proof? Nope. And on to the last...
5. It's not a subjective decision when designers use things like evidence (something you obviously know nothing about) based on usability research and studies.
I have no problem with people speaking out against something (though the comment that there is a lack of arguments against responsive is a joke - there's probably just as many articles against as their are for due to link bait like this), but when you do argue against something, you need to present proof that shows you're right.
The author raises a good point about page load times not really being minimized and lack of thought around good responsive design. However, I'm unconvinced about the rest of the arguments.
For example, he notes "The first rule in usability 101 is to give the end user what they expect." Maybe for the first year or two in the smartphone era it might have been acceptable to simply provide a shrunken zoomed out version of the site. The onus would have been on the user to navigate appropriately. Which... is a lot of work. My (swiftly getting older) eyes appreciate the larger fonts and readability that in theory a responsive design provides. I now expect to be able to read am article in portrait mode with a decent font size without having to zoom in and out. Maybe I'm alone but I would not be surprised if more users expect this now.
With mobile-first you are optimizing for mobile, so the only extra bandwidth would be that fraction of your CSS that addresses bigger screens, so I think that his page load times is a weak point just like the first one, it all comes down to badly designed sites being bad.
> The author raises a good point about page load times not
> really being minimized and lack of thought around good
> responsive design
The author has likely not experienced the wonders of setting images as DIV backgrounds, then setting @media screen and (max-width: 320px) { #ID {display: none; } }
Or even going that (oh so tedious) extra step of sniffing browser signature at the server-side, and negating higher bandwidth assets.
[+] [-] cleverjake|13 years ago|reply
wrong. wrong. wrong. wrong. wrong.
A rebuttal -
1. It Defeats User Expectation
This only holds true if A: your user has never seen a mobile site before (and if they are on a phone thats true for about ~0.5s), or B: if your responsive design is poorly implemented. A well designed site will be intuitive.
2 - It Costs More and Takes Longer
Let's assume that you have customers that will use your site on a non desktop device. If that is the case - you are making users use the wrong tool for the job. A site that takes advantage of the desktop experience will not work as well on mobile. Creating a tailored experience for them will absolutely increase conversion (if your site converts anyone to anything), and at the very least, reduce frustration and eye strain. I can't speak for everyone, but the month or two of part time work it took one of my jobs to add a mobile site was paid for by the increase in sales not too much long after. Not only that, but its now built in. When the kindle fire was released, we saw great numbers on that device. Why? because the responsive design was well done and fit that device's screen great. Saying that it 'costs more' is incredibly short sighted.
3.Non-Responsive Designs Usually Work
'working' doesn't mean it can't work better. all text websites work, too. But we use images because they enhance the experience.
4. There is Often No Load Time Benefit All this is saying is that a lot of sites are done badly. This has nothing to do with the style of responsive design in general. Tools like Modernizr allow you to optionally load a number of resources that would otherwise not load.
5. It’s a Compromise Of course? All design is compromise. The goal is to make the compromise in the favor of the customer.
Responsive design is not a silver bullet, and not always a good idea, depending on the site - but this article is /really / weak.
[+] [-] kellishaver|13 years ago|reply
If you take a progressive enhancement approach and work your way up from low-end mobile to full-featured desktop, the process is 100x easier and the end result is, in my experience, an overall cleaner and more stable code base that makes for better performance across all devices/platforms.
[+] [-] nhangen|13 years ago|reply
To start, regardless of whether the experiment pays off long-term, that does not negate the fact that it does require extra design and development time. There is much more code to handle, regardless of whether you use a framework or build it bespoke. Additionally, whether you design for mobile first, or last, there is more design time required. Period.
Second, both the author and OP have lumped 100% of all websites together, and generalized the argument. Sure, responsive may be worthwhile in some cases (as the post misses), but there are many cases where it isn't worthwhile.
My argument for using responsive is that yes, it's worthwhile, if and when the return is there. As a freelancer, this means I must be getting paid for the extra work. As a company owner, this means that we must see value from the resource spend, which could be in the form of better UX, more eyeballs, or more profits.
[+] [-] bicknergseng|13 years ago|reply
On that note, I'm really curious what "continue to full site" clickthroughs are across the internet. I could be the only one thinking this way.
[+] [-] blago|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dubcanada|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|13 years ago|reply
And while modern phones have become rather good at zooming on the content (which does not mean the text gets big enough, far from it, I regularly encounter blogs I can't read without using readability other other equivalent tools, because the font is too small even zoomed in) scrolling is still rather fiddly, especially one-handed: it's not rare that the scrolling "starts wrong" and I end up decentered from the column I want to read, and now I have to fiddle with positioning and zooming to get back to reading.
[+] [-] cleverjake|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lwhi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calinet6|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matznerd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comex|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|13 years ago|reply
I believe it's such browsers that the author was referring to.
Still, admittedly, using heuristics to patch the css shouldn't really be a browser's task, so your point holds.
[+] [-] uptown|13 years ago|reply
That's the whole idea.
[+] [-] skrebbel|13 years ago|reply
For example, my favourite online newspapers on my cellphone are those which don't default to some half-arsed mobile layout.
[+] [-] heyitsnick|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsxwolf|13 years ago|reply
This is exceptionally irritating when the browser is more than capable of displaying the full site properly, and the mobile site doesn't have all the features of the regular site.
Continuing a bit off topic on my rant, another terrible UX is finding an article you want to read in a search, tapping the link, and finding out that article isn't available in the mobile site, and simultaneously not giving an option for the full site. Taking it even further, some sites force you to download the mobile app, and only then do you find out the article isn't available in that app! I'm going to stop now - I'm getting so mad just thinking about it.
[+] [-] myared|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymouz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LaGrange|13 years ago|reply
The issue isn't, I think, responsive design itself, it's that it's not so trivial to make it work better than device-based workarounds.
[+] [-] neilparikh11|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tharris0101|13 years ago|reply
I know that as a consumer, I get annoyed when a mobile version of a site comes up and the first thing I do is check for the "Desktop Site" link. I just don't trust that the developer has included everything in the mobile site that the desktop site includes.
A well designed site will look and act great on a desktop, iOS device and Android device without extra work.
[+] [-] lucisferre|13 years ago|reply
That said, building anything more interactive than a blog layout with it is actually very hard. It is time consuming, there is tedious work to do to tweak for each individual mobile browser quirk, and it may not be the best thing for a startup to invest time in. "Mobile first" certainly sounds nice, but "desktop first" is probably a faster more efficient route to product-market fit.
So I'd just recommend caution in how strongly we parrot "responsive/adaptive all the things" as common wisdom without discussing the possible downsides. It isn't black and white.
[+] [-] notjustanymike|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blauwbilgorgel|13 years ago|reply
That said: If your mobile phone has so much trouble displaying a 960px width static centered website (the norm on the current web), so much so, that your mobile browser demands a different design, then I posit your design isn't broken, some mobile browsers are broken.
I expect that in the near future, when resolutions get upped and mobile browsing experiences advance, responsive design becomes more and more unnecessary. To me responsive design for mobile devices seems more of a band-aid for less capable devices. Less capable devices with post-stamp sized browsers, we will soon drop in the same pile as IE6 -- Because soon we can expect any browser on any device to be able to display a 960px width static centered design just fine, without responsive design. If responsive designs stays necessary, to me it would mean the failure of mobile hardware and software manufacturers.
[+] [-] splatcollision|13 years ago|reply
Don't forget a basic principle of the web: Accessibility.
[+] [-] joshuahedlund|13 years ago|reply
It's been said a million times around these parts, but I guess I get to be the one to say it here: Get some data! Do some A/B testing! Check your bounces and pages per visits and time on site from mobile devices, then try a responsive design and see if they improve (technically, you should split and do both at the same time). What works for one site may not work for another. But projecting generalized statements with no data to back them up doesn't move anyone forward.
[+] [-] ericcholis|13 years ago|reply
1) Test on as many devices as possible, even if you are using a tested framework. Your design is going to be different that what the framework author(s) have done.
2) Be agile and responsive to your users. Just because your responsive design is amazing doesn't mean that the user experience will match.
3) Catalog your "must have" features, such as search and navigation. Make sure that these "must haves" are present and accessible across all your designs. Loosing navigation on mobile means dead ends for your users.
4) Related to #3, keep your experience consistent across your devices. Perhaps mobile users do need a different site, but don't loose the core purpose of the site. Mobile shopping carts need to function as similar as possible to their non-mobile versions.
5) Responsive !== Mobile (sometimes). Just because the design scales with browser size doesn't mean it's ready for mobile.
6) Use a framework whenever possible. I don't care how smart you are, it's smarter to use a tested framework at least once. Even if this means that you eventually build your own, it will give you an idea of the conventions to follow.
7) Frameworks are awesome, but none are launch ready out of the box.
8) Find your dimension breakpoints, and what they'll do to your design. Don't go too crazy though, you don't need to design for every conceivable screen dimension.
[+] [-] notjustanymike|13 years ago|reply
The rest of article was downhill too. Claiming the full site looks fine on your iPhone is akin to saying "It works on my machine!".
It's pretty much a waste of time from top to bottom.
[+] [-] OhArgh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webbruce|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projectedoptics|13 years ago|reply
"It Defeats User Expectation"
So let's keep everything exactly the same?
Responsive design to me is progress, eventually we'll either come up with good practices for working with it or maybe something else will take it's place. The way we access the internet is in constant flux and the 960 magazine layout has many pit falls in terms of usability outside of desktop sized screens.
[+] [-] sparebytes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muriithi|13 years ago|reply
I always wonder how long it will take for tablets and phones to be so ubiquitous that this debate will become moot and you target mobile from the get-go?
[+] [-] emehrkay|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shawnc|13 years ago|reply
The argument that responsive design is not worth it, because some people do bad responsive design (or even most do bad responsive design) is pretty odd. To carry that same sort of argument out into anything in life would land you in serious life lessons.
Yes, responsive design takes more time (no matter how you slice it). And, yes, sometimes it's not needed. Those should just be obvious to any developer worth their salt. Like everything considered when developing a website - weigh it all, figure out what's best for the project and it's users. Most definitely - time/money will be a factor in those considerations sometimes.
All I can think is the writer of this article hasn't seen how powerful responsive design can be?
[+] [-] TheFuture|13 years ago|reply
Anyone arguing that "they're just doing a bad responsive design" I think it missing the point. Responsive almost means it has to be bad in some way, because it is a compromise of design between 2 very different devices, not just in screen size but in use cases.
The "right" approach, is the same thing we've been taught for 50 years, separating code from presentation. Building a robust API for your backend data makes the front-end presentation much easier and cheaper, so you can afford to make front-ends tailored for whatever you need.
[+] [-] jclem|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yen223|13 years ago|reply
Give me a usable website over one that "meets my expectations", dammit! As much as I like the desktop version of let's say www.theverge.com, I can honestly say it wouldn't work on a mobile at all. It would be too cluttered, and the links too small to tap.
On a side note, is there a mobile version of Hacker News out there?
[+] [-] primatology|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russelluresti|13 years ago|reply
On each point...
1. Where's the proof? Where's the research? The usability studies? The group surveys? There is NO evidence presented to support this point. It's just opinion and conjecture. Moving on.
2. Any actual numbers on ROI or expected ROI? Nope. Moving on again.
3. Again, any usability studies to back this up? No. Next!
4. Research? Numbers? Proof? Nope. And on to the last...
5. It's not a subjective decision when designers use things like evidence (something you obviously know nothing about) based on usability research and studies.
I have no problem with people speaking out against something (though the comment that there is a lack of arguments against responsive is a joke - there's probably just as many articles against as their are for due to link bait like this), but when you do argue against something, you need to present proof that shows you're right.
[+] [-] sunraa|13 years ago|reply
For example, he notes "The first rule in usability 101 is to give the end user what they expect." Maybe for the first year or two in the smartphone era it might have been acceptable to simply provide a shrunken zoomed out version of the site. The onus would have been on the user to navigate appropriately. Which... is a lot of work. My (swiftly getting older) eyes appreciate the larger fonts and readability that in theory a responsive design provides. I now expect to be able to read am article in portrait mode with a decent font size without having to zoom in and out. Maybe I'm alone but I would not be surprised if more users expect this now.
[+] [-] emp_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billirvine|13 years ago|reply
The author has likely not experienced the wonders of setting images as DIV backgrounds, then setting @media screen and (max-width: 320px) { #ID {display: none; } }
Or even going that (oh so tedious) extra step of sniffing browser signature at the server-side, and negating higher bandwidth assets.
Effort. Try it sometime. ;)
[+] [-] pxlpshr|13 years ago|reply
I'm not suggesting pagespeed isn't important, that's something completely different and impacted by variety of factors.