Comment by blauwbilgorgel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blauwbilgorgel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

I won't: Accessibility is very important to me.

Though I see a difference between access to design and access to content.

I think it is fine to just serve up a reset-CSS for 2008 blackberry devices in a few years, like some now do for IE6 browsers. I don't think it is reasonable or necessary to expect designers to create responsive designs that translate to 2008 blackberry devices (or IE6 browsers) and also work on the future devices of our choice.

You are making a very strong assumption that scaling a 960px fixed width site to a viewport on a device is an optimal solution. It's fantastic I can see the entire site on my device in landscape mode; it's a tragedy that I have to double tap on a text block to make it readable.

Designers should be working to eliminate unnecessary and repetitive interactions that get in the way of accessing content.

Seriously. Not to mention even if his "960pix wide" site is displayable that doesn't mean it will be usable on a very small screen (or window -- being able to shrink one's browser window can be very useful, but many sites become utterly unusable).

My phone has high-resolution screen, but it's pretty small too, and it can easily display stuff that's a complete pain to actually read because the font size is so small.

His examples of "just fine" non-responsive designs in small windows are, well, pretty horrible.

I dunno if this guy is ego-driven ("I will never allow my beautiful site design to be besmirched just to suit its users!") or just lazy, but one thing is clear: he doesn't care very much about his users...

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