The future of Web design: Where is the web-responsive design road?

Author Tom Ewer that in most cases, Web pages do not require responsive design. Although mobile devices will become the main channel for future Internet access, not all sites should use the sort of design, perhaps classification to choose from. The article enumerates 5 points to prove the drawbacks or passable aspects of response design, and describes it as having a "free pass", always eluding criticism and advice.

Facebook design Director Katearonowitz: "We develop the product first consider the mobile side, followed by the desktop side." ”

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch: "Mobile design is even more transformative than the PC revolution." ”

By 2014, the number of Internet access through mobile devices will exceed the PC side. In the future, designing mobile devices will be a top priority for Web developers.

Responsive design seems to be the direction of future design, but I disagree. Today, I want to explain why I think responsive design is not the best solution for Web design.

What is a responsive design?

Wikipedia's response-style design is this:

Responsive web design is a layered style sheet (Css3media queries) used in Web site production to accommodate a variety of layouts with fluid grids and to use images flexibly. Users can access the same content across different devices and browsers, and the layout facilitates reading and browsing, with minor adjustments, translations, or scrolling.

The website design will be adjusted according to the device specific resolution or screen size. According to the above definition, the response design seems to be a promising development.

In some cases, I am also a proponent of responsive design. For example, when a desktop Web application is not effectively rendered on a mobile device screen, responsive design works. Google Maps is a good example:

Desktop display

Mobile Display

If the content of the site is largely dependent on the picture, responsive design is definitely a good solution. However, when content is a Web site or blog for most text, I believe that response design is a waste of time.

I want to explain why I think in many cases responsive design is not worth it.

1. Violating user expectations

The first rule of availability (usability 101) is to meet the expectations of end users, confusing end users with the biggest failure of web design. However, this is what the response design does.

Take the blog as an example. The most common "standard" blog design, the top of the page is the title, the following is divided into two columns, one column is the content of the blog, the other column is other content. Hundreds of blog sites are designed to do so, because it's easy to operate, and that's what people expect.

If you visit a blog that responds to design development, the traditional sidebar will definitely disappear and may be moved to the top or bottom of the page. But one thing is for sure, it's not what you expect.

Take "Cats who Code" as an example. displayed on the desktop, the top is the navigation bar and toolbar, which includes the latest articles and snippets, and the search box in the sidebar:

The use of responsive design technology in mobile phone display:

Both the navigation bar and the toolbar are gone. After several scrolling pages, at the bottom of the page finally found the original sidebar, but the navigation bar is still no trace to find.

Perhaps proponents of responsive design say the site is just a simple example of failure. But don't forget that this site has just been rated as 10 "excellent" responsive web design sites. I think this is a typical example of responsive design. In fact, I am very eager to see the desktop version of the layout of the mobile phone.

2. High cost and low efficiency

Typically, response design takes longer and costs more than a non responsive design. Initial funding is generally stretched, and it can be very painful to pay a large sum of money for responsive design.

I agree with the view that the cost of responsive design is better than developing a single mobile site from zero. But do you know what is cheaper than responsive design? That is the design of the non responsive type. In addition to its long time consuming, response design is relatively complex to develop.

You think your site will end up not using responsive design, which is the wrong idea. Ask yourself, what are the rewards of responsive design? This is also a mistake if you think that a Web site that is not responsive can provide services to mobile users. That's what I'm going to talk about here.

3. Non-responsive design working principle

Ask my blog in a Mac petition:

So far, the website is operating normally. My site is based on Woo Themescanvas theme, and no response design was used when developing.

Ask my blog in the iphone petition:

On the iphone 4s Retina screen, the non responsive design can completely display the layout of the site vertically.

If you feel that the longitudinal text area shows the formality, you can rotate the device horizontally to view the following:

You can also enlarge the text content by double-clicking the screen.

Today's mobile devices can effectively display a Web design Web site that is not responsive. There are exceptions, however, that some unstructured design sites do not show up on the PC.

Most of the time, a well-designed desktop site can be a perfect display of the original layout on mobile devices.

4. Low loading efficiency

Mobile devices are usually connected to the Internet via a subnet (low speed), so web development should be streamlined to ensure optimal loading time.

Although this is a reasonable suggestion. In fact, many of the response designs do not take into account the loading problem, and many designers are accustomed to hiding unwanted elements in the page. While this is not the best approach, it is the most common practice.

The best (non-responsive) solution is to use deferred loading, which is the ultimate solution for loading dense elements. This is an image delay loading code that can be used on your site.

5. Compromise

Responsive design can be seen as a "compromise", depending on the subjective decision of the designer. Even if the Web site uses this technology, it will not be able to display the best results for desktop layouts on mobile devices.

Because of the changes in the layout of mobile devices, many mobile users will be difficult to accept or adapt, thereby losing users.

I think "compromise" on a mobile platform is no better than a non responsive design, especially if it takes a long time and cost.

Conclusion

My 2 main reasons for writing this article are:

1. I believe that, in many cases, responsive design is totally unnecessary.

2. On the Internet, there is a clear lack of arguments against response-style design.

There is no perfect thing in the world, but responsive design seems to get a "free pass" that resists most constructive criticism.

I do not object to the theory of responsive design, but in many simple cases it is not necessary to use it. In fact, many people follow the same bandwagon, so they do so. Maybe you should spend some time thinking about whether you really need a responsive design and whether your visitors really benefit from it.

Original: MANAGEWP compilation: CSDN