Website designers should forget the desktop: mainly mobile devices

Lead: American Network magazine Slate today published an article titled Farhad manjoo, saying that with the increasing use of tablets, major websites should pay attention to such devices, even when developing websites, we should first consider the mobile device experience and then transplant This concise design to the desktop.

The full text is as follows:

Experience

Every morning, as long as I get up early, I will pick up the iPad to browse the technology headlines in the morning. This seems very common, but the websites I often browse are not powerful. Taking TechCrunch for example, this tech blog often drives my tablet crazy.

First, the loading speed is slow. The loading sequence of the entire page element is unreasonable at all. First, the body is displayed, and then the top and right navigation bars are displayed. After a few seconds, the title will appear. At this moment, I was very depressed. But after all, the article has come out, so I calmed down and started to read it. However, after the page is loaded, the body and title of the article suddenly disappear after about half a second. What ?! Why does it appear first and then disappear?

If you are lucky enough, this situation will last for only one second and then return to normal. As a result, you think that there may be system vulnerabilities, and you will forgive TechCrunch designers-after all, when they develop websites, they are targeting traditional PCs, but you are using odd tablets.

But sometimes you are not so lucky. The text will flash repeatedly, and the whole website will disappear, leaving only the ads for the TechCrunch iPad app. To read the article, you have to click a poor link to close the advertisement. At this time, you have waited for nearly 10 seconds to read this article, and the whole person will be angry.

But you cannot. If a website is abandoned because of poor performance on the iPad, you may need to discard half of the Internet. TechCrunch's mobile experience is indeed poor, but it is not so bad. From the New York Times to New York, from Google (Weibo) news to salon, and even slate, many news sites have poor performance on tablets. In fact, it is not just a news website. Even big-name Internet companies such as Amazon (Weibo) are not doing well on the iPad.

Adjust thinking

The problem is that the content of many websites is too crowded and not suitable for the display of tablets. When you load a website on an iPad, you will often see texts, images, and videos mixed together. The code running speed of these websites is too slow and there are too many vulnerabilities. These websites are not suitable for small-sized devices. The buttons and links above are too small for finger-clicking; website images are not very effective on the High-split screen of a tablet.

The key issue is that designers have not made too many designs for tablets-they may have made minor adjustments to the page for the iPad, but this is usually just a remedy, it mainly designs websites for Laptops and Desktops.

It's time to change your mind. IPad has been available for three years, and its rise seems unstoppable. Moreover, the iPad is not alone-Google Nexus 7, Amazon Kindle Fire, and Microsoft (Weibo) surface will soon contribute a huge amount of traffic. The Internet needs to adapt to these devices. Designers should not only be compatible with tablets when creating websites, but should be dominated by tablets. In fact, they should even consider tablets first-first design pages for screens of 7 inch and 9 inch, and then adjust the pages for desktop browsers.

Why tablet computers? Not only is the iPad and Its similar products rapidly becoming the main online device. (According to data from multiple parties, mobile devices account for more than 10% of Internet traffic, which continues to grow .) The limitations of tablets-small screen sizes and relatively small bandwidth and processing capabilities-can improve the performance of websites on desktop devices. Websites optimized for mobile devices are usually faster and more beautiful, and easier to navigate than desktop devices. If a designer designs a website for a tablet computer first, the entire Internet will become better.

Unified design

It should be emphasized that I have not called on the website to create a new version that is optimized for tablets or smartphones outside of the desktop version. Many websites adopt such measures, but because many companies do not have enough resources to maintain two sets of different designs, their tablet and smartphone versions usually do poorly. These mobile websites cannot provide exactly the same features as the desktop version-for example, the slate smartphone version cannot load comments for readers-and when the designer upgrades the website, generally, the desktop version is preferred.

This is completely understandable: For most websites, desktops contribute a lot of traffic and advertising revenue. In addition, mobile websites are still relatively new and quite variable-there are many smartphones and tablets using different technologies, making designers less accustomed to developing attractive websites for them.

In addition, we need to consider the money. The entire online advertising industry is built around desktop browsers. Currently, the most dynamic interactive advertisements cannot be displayed on a tablet.

For the above reasons, network companies should focus on creating a unified experience that is compatible with all electronic devices. Under ideal conditions, mobile websites will not become the branches of desktop websites-desktop websites will be the same as mobile websites: simple, fast, and effective on all devices.

Practice Philosophy

This idea is not radical. Many website designers are practicing this concept-Jason Kottke and John cruber blogs are designed for desktop browsers, however, because the loading speed is fast and there are not many messy elements, it looks like it is designed for mobile devices.

As BuzzFeed's John Herrman said, some new entrepreneurial websites have begun to mimic these minimalistic styles, this includes the blog platform svbtle and medium, the discussion site branch, and the social networking site app.net. At the beginning, these websites seem to give priority to the iPad and then port it to the desktop. In addition, these websites have beautiful appearances and convenient navigation. This is no coincidence.

Of course, it is easy for startups with ample funds to focus on mobile networks. However, for websites that have already established business foundation, it is difficult to directly invest in mobile devices because they rely heavily on advertisements. But they should have a try. In the coming months, mobile browser traffic will soar, especially when Apple launches an iPad with lower prices and smaller sizes, and Amazon upgrades the Kindle Fire.

Today, surfing on the Internet with a tablet is always a slow and vulnerable website. But soon, readers will not continue to endure this situation. If your page takes a long time to load, if your picture is not clear enough, if your link is not easy to click, If you continuously throw iPad app ads, I will use a tablet to access other websites-to access those websites that really pay attention to them.