Why Responsive Design Sucks

These are the symptoms of bad responsive design. There are ways to mitigate these things by really going about proper responsive design, and that takes actual usage.

(#3 Is a huge pet peeve of mine)

I fear too many designers only "test" the mobile site; they don't actually "use" it. Using and testing are two vastly different things as the former actually puts you into the driver's seat for a ride from the visitor's (read: customer's) perspective. Until that happens, designers are only engaging in speculative design that they think is responsive. It's not quite the same.

All the problems highlighted shouldn't be happening on a properly designed and architected site.

The author seems to misunderstand what responsive design actually is.

Responsive design is not simply 'download everything, show less on smaller screens'. If your version of responsive design sounds like this, then you're doing it wrong.

Responsive design means taking into account the form factor of the device, and tailoring the layout / positioning etc in accordance. This may mean hiding links and buttons behind some extra drop-down menu or something similar, but you shouldn't be simply hiding things that the user is suddenly not allowed to view.

Additionally, if making your site responsive adds so much extra crap that your 'responsive' version loads noticeably slower than the non-responsive version, then I'm going to hazard a guess and say that your original design is also bad.

Responsive design isn't about desktop vs mobile, it is about the whole range of possible screen sizes from very small to very large.

I take issue with #1 - I'd rather not have a website make assumptions about how I want to use it based on the device. A single point of entry for all devices makes for a consistent experience, and good responsive design will allow you to get to where you want to go efficiently.

Literally everything the author states is Very Wrong, or a symptom of only noticing bad implementations. The most frustrating part is that they are coming from the perspective of responsive design only being used for mobile, which is super, ultra Wrong.

I think author is confused about what responsive design actually is.