Quote:
Originally Posted by Deputy Chief Command
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Webmaster Advertising
Responsive design is where it's at, one site, coded to work with all screen resolutions, pc, tablet and mobile...
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While I embraced that approach for at least 3 years, nowadays I'm not so convinced.
Responsive design has an element of randomness, and depending on the code, it may become weird. That's why many people is complaining in this thread. Responsive design is a good solution if you're told to work with the code without touching it. Then you have no options (well, you have some, but very limited). I prefer the different code approach: "if desktop, load site A. If mobile, load site B".
See, the problem is not many people knows what UX/UI is, and from those who know about it, very little people knows what to do with it. That's why I know of good UX developers who charge an average of $150 an hour: they know their stuff and your site will be perfect.
The problem here is most developers think this way: "OK, let's code a regular (desktop) version and then use the same site only smaller and try to fit everything in a limited space" when it should be "for desktop I have all this space and I can do this and this. for mobile, I have a different canvas, so I have to keep the theme, yet do something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. Let's think in UX terms". That's the difference between good and bad mobile design.
Also, relying in desktop versions for mobile display is bananas. First, not everybody has the latest smart phones. If people complained about IE6 support until a couple years ago because you could miss as much as 5% of traffic, saying you're willing to miss more than 75% of traffic is weird to the very least. Second, even with a smart phone, if you have traffic limitations or slow bandwidth and you're serving pages with really heavy images... well, you won't visit that page ever again.
Think about this: when you're complaining about e-bay or whatever... do you really think they're stupid? really? I bet you'd love to be at least 0.1% of what eBay is. And they didn't grow out of stupidity, they know what they're doing and they invest in development 10 or even 100x your total earnings. That's why there isn't a single successful site without a real mobile version. They know their stuff