Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#41

Post by mnicole » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

lovamova wrote: post #34

masklinn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't that make you think that we should revisit the sidebar No. The sidebar works and is effective when there's significant horizontal space, such as on a desktop screen with ample horizontal space. It just does not work when horizontal space is a premium, as is the case on smartphones (which generally barely fit a standard typographic line length at readable size in portrait)

Sidebars don't add anything necessary to the user experience. It's just clutter. If there's enough horizontal space, I suggest using columns instead, they fit the purpose better.

> Sidebars don't add anything necessary to the user experience. It's just clutter.

This is a really weird argument; sidebars are preferable to a lot of other patterns depending on the site and doesn't at all mean the content is less important than anything else on the page.

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#42

Post by tokenizer » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:45 PM UTC

nhangen wrote: post #29

cleverjake wrote: post #8

Wrong. 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 desk…

I'm going to take exception to your 2nd point. 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 a…

I'm confused. Is this argument for responsive versus standalone desktop or mobile, or responsive versus two sites, one for each.

Because I'd like to say that managing two projects, be it two code bases that both have to be created and configured, takes just as long if not longer, than simply building the edge cases needed for an intuitive responsive site.

But there's points for both methods in my books. I just think not accounting for mobile either way is ridiculous (unless a client is unwilling to pay for it).

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#43

Post by nickpyett » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

Can't post comments on the post anymore... This just me?

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#44

Post by lucisferre » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

kellishaver wrote: post #19

cleverjake wrote: post #8

Wrong. 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 desk…

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 exper…

Untrue in my experience, but if you're experience has been positive that's great. I've done the mobile first approach and found that for anything with interactions that are more complex than a simple blog or other content driven service it does add significant time and effort and the quality of the desktop experience typically also suffers as most of the focus is on polishing the look and feel of the mobile browser experience in addition to addressing each and every browser quirk between Android and iOS.

I'm a fan of responsive/adaptive designs but based on experience just dont' feel I can always recommend the "mobile first" approach to startups. Perhaps for more established businesses that can afford the extra design effort, it's fine. I still have a lot of reservations though.

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#45

Post by splatcollision » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:49 PM UTC

Responsive Design doesn't have to be a pain if you just do a little bit of thought, research and planning, and a little bit know and care about your craft. Let the content inform the design, and plan from the start for flexible designs.

It is going to get a LOT easier when I'm done with the next revision of Edit Room... Designing to multiple custom breakpoints is amazing... [1]

Going responsive and flexible does involve a leap of faith, and articles like this one are from folks who have not yet taken it.

[Edit Room is fast, flexible design prototyping and css animation.](http://www.edit-room.com)

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#46

Post by splatcollision » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:53 PM UTC

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #37

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 adv…

You're forgetting that old, less capable devices are still widely used, all around the world, and will be for many years to come.

Don't forget a basic principle of the web: Accessibility.

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#47

Post by ericcholis » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:55 PM UTC

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.

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#48

Post by nhangen » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:57 PM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #42

nhangen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to take exception to your 2nd point. 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 a…

I'm confused. Is this argument for responsive versus standalone desktop or mobile, or responsive versus two sites, one for each. Because I'd like to say that managing two projects, be it two code bases that both have to be created and configured, takes just as long if not longer, than simply building the edge cases needed for an intuitive responsive site. But there's points for both methods in my books. I just think…

I'm saying that in many cases, you don't have two projects, you have just one, which is that of the website built for desktop/laptop screens. Could be a cheap client, or a short-term project that doesn't require a mobile site, etc.

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#49

Post by kellishaver » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:58 PM UTC

lucisferre wrote: post #44

kellishaver wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exper…

Untrue in my experience, but if you're experience has been positive that's great. I've done the mobile first approach and found that for anything with interactions that are more complex than a simple blog or other content driven service it does add significant time and effort and the quality of the desktop experience typically also suffers as most of the focus is on polishing the look and feel of the mobile browser e…

There are a lot of cases where responsive design just isn't a good fit, and something with complex user interactions (like a lot of web apps) is often one of them. Responsive design is great for things like content sites, galleries, informational sites... most forms of content publishing. Anything that requires the user to actually create and/or manage large amounts of data or has a lot of interactive media, however, would probably benefit more from a dedicated mobile site and/or app.

Re: Why Responsive Design Is Not Worth It

#50

Post by alan57 » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 2:58 PM UTC

This is an opinion. People are allowed to have them. The article may make points that some (many) don't agree with, but that doesn't make them not valid. That said, the title of the article inflates the argument.. just a tad.