I have to say, I’m not sure I agree with either of you. Blanket statements don’t cover the complexities of real life, really. It can be a very time intensive frustrating process to convert a very non-responsive corporate application or website to a responsive one. Every page may need to be laid out, re-arranged (how will this collapse, where will this block go - how to make this area into some sort of blocks or what to do with this table or graphic). Every page may very well have to be approved. Some of them may need redesigned entirely to make them more RWD friendly.
The actual changes may not be complicated, but the process can be very not simple and very not quick.
On the flip side, you can have very complex sites that are very simple and quick to implement these sorts of changes on. It all depends on their layout and construction, and on the people you’re working with too.
So I think neither of these positions is in the right entirely
I’m joining the conversation late, and haven’t read the whole thread.
Google will not search your site if it’s not mobile friendly, that should be reason
enough to add some media-queries to your css and add some styles to accommodate
tablets and phones.
It amazes me that anyone involved with designing / developing sites these days don’t
do RWD, with Bootstrap, Foundation and who know’s how many other responsive frameworks
out there. If you don’t know how to do it by hand, just use one of the frameworks and add the
classes to your HTML, easy peasy.
As an ecommerce shop owner and heavy online shopper myself, I am really starting to hate responsive sites on my laptop. On my old school site, I can view many products before having to pull the first scroll. Many new sites I have to scroll just to get to the first row of products, then another scroll to the second! Never mind on the product page I feel like I’m seeing the top of a large poster and can never view a whole image or set of details on one screen. Top half I can see the top of the blouse, scroll, see the bottom with stuff spread across my entire screen instead of presented to me neatly in my view.
That doesn’t sound like a problem caused by responsive design per se, but rather by poor design or poor implementation. (And I agree with you, there is a lot of that about.)
I don’t care what it is called… Material Design… Flat Design… Responsive Design… I call it Crap-Design!
My PC screen is filled with monotone teal… brazen orange, pukey green overly sized square-edged rectangles. I am insulted!
Look at this page… a flat black banner on top. A banner with three different shades of off green. A drop down action square (not button!) of What… purple or orange or teal! Round, loudly colored disks starting each response…
Even the Reply button directly below what I am typing is Ichhy Orange!
Really? Icons that remind me of the three years I spent in Kindergarten!
And… ALL the sites look the same!
Yes… I have owned an advertising agency in Monterey. Impressive layout design was paramount to us. Creating an image that was…FIRST of all…Inviting!!! and also a design that created a memorable image for the customer. We wanted them to linger on the page… And come back!!!
Not with this new design plague. Orange is not a comfort color… Nor are sharp, borderless rectangles!
It is gone on the internet… Huge off blue blocks… No borders… No gradients… No Class!
Just came from the Yahoo mail page to join this site… Invaded by Purple blocks? Uggh.
The internet is no longer Right-Brain Friendly!
So you don’t agree with design choices. Colors, etc.
I’m confused why you equate responsive design with these issues (actually all types of “design”…flat, material, responsive, etc)…ok actually I’m not confused. Hint, you, like everyone else who dislikes responsive design, is just ignorant (ignorant meaning unknowing) of what responsive design is, and what it entails. You are blaming the wrench instead of the mechanic. The wrench isn’t telling the mechanic to do all these things you don’t like. It just provides a tool for which you to do your job (making web pages responsive). It’s not the hammers fault that the mechanic decided to destroy the car and beat the car into oblivion, and then hit the customer in the head with the said hammer.
I’ll await arguments of how responsive design, aka making webpages responsive for all devices and viewports, has caused designers to decide to design “like we are in kindergarten”. ;-).
I don’t know how long it takes for those subject to visually induced seizures to be affected, but that site needs to come with a “keep your finger on the close button” warning.
<sarcasm>But that site isn’t even responsive. Just try to imagine how much worse the design would become if it were!
And now I’m puzzled about how that rigid layout did not lead to more tasteful colour/image choices.</sarcasm>
Firstly, material design and flat design and responsive design are not at all the same things. Before you rant about things, you need to learn to separate them and deal with one issue at a time. Attacking them all as the same just makes you sound uninformed.
In addition, some of your problems are just you misunderstanding the difference between a forum and a company’s web page. If by icons you’re meaning “emoticons”, those are a common part of today’s communication, whether we like it or not. Any forum system that didn’t have them wouldn’t be a viable product.
The colored discs are merely for people who don’t have an image. I don’t see the trouble with those at all.
Colors are preferential and wildly different from person to person. There is definitely color research, but you can’t focus the design of every website in the world on the same color research or you end up with all of them being identical
Don’t expect whomever designed this site or any other to share your preferences!
Yes… I have owned an advertising agency in Monterey. Impressive layout design was paramount to us. Creating an image that was…FIRST of all…Inviting!!! and also a design that created a memorable image for the customer. We wanted them to linger on the page… And come back!!!
Have you, though? Then you are surely aware that what matters is what the client wants, and what their users want. Not what you want. If the users of a site find it inviting, or “cool”, or sophisticated, or user friendly, and you as the marketer or developer do not… you deal with it. You do what the users, and what the owner/client, want.
I’m sure we’d love to see examples of sites that you design to be non mobile friendly (that’s what responsive design is, the best way to be mobile friendly, since mobile web browsing is in the ballpark of half of all browsing). It’d be interesting to see how they improve upon the collective wisdom of the international development community on what makes for good web designs.
Disagreeing with a design pattern is fine, and part of the discussion. But don’t just rail against all techniques newer than the '90s and expect people to agree with you. Learn about what they are, and why they are, and then debate them.
Well i would say still desktop experience is much better than your mobile experience and developer have done anything to make it more feel in the android version.
It does bug me when a desktop site uses width break points and I have my browser just slightly too thin to get the full desktop version. I usually prefer user agent detection over width break points