Responsive design has totally ruined desktop web experience (rant)

Oh, yeah, sure. We create business Websites for “engagement.” Uh huh. Right.

And what is “getting your customer interested in your brand” if it isn’t ADVERTISING? Why do people advertise? To get people interested in their brand! Duh!

Google points out that the majority of Websites today are still not “mobile friendly.”

Okay, I think I’ve got this! I just spent 2 entire days, a lot of study and a lot of experimentation, and I believe I have successfully converted the AuntieV’s Pizzeria site to MOBILE FRIENDLY!!! I haven’t uploaded the new template and style sheet yet, but as soon as I do, I’ll let you have a look. I want to make some back-ups of the existing files first, just to be safe, by on my localhost everything seems to work. I may have to tweak once I get it uploaded to the Web where I can test. I tested here using Firefox Webmaster tools, and it look decent.

I did have to get rid of the background, as I couldn’t get it to work without the background showing through where it wasn’t supposed to. But white looks good, and nice and crisp. Background was too dark anyway.

Okay everyone time to take a breather. Things are getting personal. There is zero reason to dig into others personal/professional sites. The topic isn’t about a specific site or individual but a practice/theory.

I’m going to clean up a few posts to get things back on track. Taking it to a personal level again will result in a day suspension so you can cool off at the moderators digression.

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Ya know, 20 years ago, people were making Websites (if they even were, twenty years ago) using TABLES!

I learned my Web designing form SITEPOINT books, so if I’ve done something wrong you are going to have to blame Sitepoint. I have about SIX Sitepoint books from authors like Rachel Andrew & Dan Shafer, "HTML UTOPIA: DESIGNING WITHOUT TABLES USING CSS, and Kevin Yank, “Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP and MySQL,” as well as several other Sitepoint books. They are my “bible.” I refer to them often. I have NEVER designed ONE table based Website. I learned the right way from the beginning, using CSS layout. I also visit the W3C Website often, and have VALIDATED MY CODE (yes, for DreamMaker Graphics too) to make sure they are without code errors.

Many Websites today are of such poor design, I would be embarrassed if to call myself a designer if they were mine. Most so-called designers are not designers at all; they are “coders.”

I personally abhor the way Web designing is going today. There is no ART in it at all. It has become mundane. There is a boring SAMENESS to nearly every site, including the over use of circles with pictures in them! UGH! No one knows how to create interest anymore, and sites have become positively ugly in many cases.

I’d love to see some of your examples, since you seem to think you are so great. Show me!

I agree. This guy just got my dander up BIG TIME!

Sorry, but I was insulted by this guy’s uncalled for comments, and he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Thanks for stepping in here.

Post edited by cpradio, merging various replies that are all connected

Well, in the last two days, through much study and experimentation with one of my sites, I now know it is possible. Not my preferred way to “experience” (to use the popular term) the Web, but it can be done.

Unless you are going to provide entirely different and much edited content (read “minimal”) for a business Website, it isn’t worth the time. I could never create the kind of site that I’m used to doing and make it “mobile friendly” too. Just can’t be done, and even if it could, it would cost far more than most small businesses would be willing to pay.

Just checked the site on an iPad Mini 2 and errors appear at the foot of the page stating missing files.

You might enjoy this. It is NSFW language, but it’s pretty funny satire.

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Yes, I discovered that this morning when I went to upload the new style sheets etc that have been modified to make it Responsive. I have no idea why that error, because the “missing file” was a file that isn’t even called for in the indes.php file (or it shouldn’t be) I deleted the line. It was looking for a “configuration file” (???) Why, I have no idea. Don’t know when that appeared. Must have been recent, because I did not see that error the last time I visited the site, and it hasn’t been too many days ago. I may have to contact my Tech Support and ask about it, but it’s fixed now. Now, the main thing I must do is make my menu larger. Here’s where this “Resposnive Design” becomes problematic: In order to keep the site looking good on a screen, I really need to make a separate style sheet for the Responsive requirements. More work, more cost to client, which means “unaffordable” for many self employed people who tend to be my clients.

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Are you aware of the following free online web-page testers? I find them invaluable.

Google Pagespeed Insights

Google Mobile Friendly Test

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Pretty funny! I STILL run across Websites with HIT COUNTERS!!! LOL!!

My very first Website lasted a couple of weeks before it got hacked by “Turkish Hackers!” Really. I’m serious. But it had no content anyway. It was one page with some sort of design, announcing I was in the Web design business!!! Ha! Come to think of it, contrary to what I said in another post, I think I did create that one with tables. Soon after that, I discovered Site Point and bought a couple of books. Then I started to learn. First thing I learned was how much I didn’t know!

Yes.

There are thousands of purposes behind a website. My point being is that not all of them is for advertising. So yes, some websites are for advertising. Some are for fun and games.

You are giving blanket statements about the web. If you’ve been around as long as you say you have, then surely you’ve seen the evolution of the web.

And this is the fault of responsive design how…? Designers are responsible for this. Responsive design is the method of making a webpage responsive. It has nothing to do with the design. I mentioned this earlier in the thread; you aren’t the first to confuse this up.

I’d estimate me it takes me about 3-4 hours max to turn a full small business website into a responsive website. This obviously depends on how complex it is (a simpler design would be less time). 30 minutes tops to do it if I use a framework (I’m guessing that’s how long it’d take because of how slow browserstack is (to make sure there aren’t any weird bugs :wink: ). Considering the number of mobile users are increasing, and it’s well over 50%, it makes more sense to make it mobile friendly, than not mobile friendly. It’s NOT economical to NOT make your website responsive.

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What do you mean by “framework?” What’s a “framework?”

I just finished converting the auntievspizzeria.com site. Took me two days of study to find out what I had to do, and a lot of experimentation (trial and error), because I didn’t want to redesign the entire site. But, that’s because I started from zero knowledge of RWD to minimum to make it work. Then I had to go through my style sheets line by line to make the necessary changes, plus adding the meta tag to the head element in the template (no biggie there)

Frankly, I was surprised how easy it became once I figured out what the hell I was doing! Ha!

I did learn I can’t uses background images in the way I had been (really a lazy way of being able to place other elements over the top of a photo (I haven’t been real successful with the use of z-index for some reason - it does not work with elements that are floated, but only with relative positioning or absolute, I guess.)

I still have some tweaking to do on the pizza site, because the menu items are too closely spaced to be easy to use, but I have lots of room to make them fatter. That seems to be the main issue right now when I test it on Google. Otherwise it looks decent (I tested with Firefox developer tools, Responsive Design simulator).

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I still there’s an awful lot of mileage to be had in reading the piece Ethan Marcotte did in 2010 that coined the phrase ‘responsive web design’. I’ve also read the book by the same name/author which expands out on what the article offers. Both are well worth any web dev/designers time to read through.

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They take a lot of the work out and allow you to not reinvent the wheel for a lot of things, so long that you follow their way of doing things. It can really speed up development time quite a bit and allow your pages to look & feel better without a lot of design effort.

Bootstrap is by far the most popular. You don’t have to use their styles exactly, you can extend, modify, and theme them as you want. You can even look for premade themes and then customize them instead. The plain base Boostrap design is very plain and anyone who’s worked with it before can quickly identify it.

There are others. Skeleton, Foundation, SemanticUI, etc. But Bootstrap has by far the most resources out there, making it the easiest option.

Wow. This thread is quite popular. Have you guys seen Cordova. I heard IONIC2 (Angular 2 + Ionic)

https://cordova.apache.org/

This seems a bit more true RWD. Use native app to access site using a single source.

I might have to pick up a copy. Also Google has a lot of info, but some of it I don’t quite understand yet, because I’ve only scratched the surface.