Negative Link Bait

There is beginning to be a bit of a trend on the Manage WP website. They’re being all Salmony (swimming against the current) and are writing a few articles on why responsive design is not the way to go.

Of course, this being a website about responsive design we totally disagree with their argument, however not because we’re one eyed but because the arguments are ridiculous.

Lets take a look at the most recent article, “is responsive design still not worth it“. This was a follow up article to “5 reasons why responsive design is not worth it” where they were called
out for link baiting.

The follow up article listed the following five reasons as to why responsive design is still not worth going with:

It Defeats User Expectation

One of the biggest bugbears I have with responsive design relates to when I am used to a particular desktop design, only to find that the responsive design is completely different. The key navigational elements are not where they were, and perhaps
one or more have even disappeared.

My Comment: As a user I expect to be able to use a website on any device I visit. If that website was designed fixed width for a large screen you can expect this user to be pissed off.

This point isn’t about the concept and principles of responsive design, but is a fair point about some implementations of Responsive Design. There are bad implementations of CSS but you don’t see anyone blaming CSS for that, it’s the implementer that has done wrong by the tool. As Tim Kadlec writes
“Blame the implementation, not the technique“.