some really nice responsive designs lately on here

epicera said
As a general rule… I think it’s dangerous to lay out any blanket statement with the word “all” in it… it just leaves you too vulnerable to exceptions. When you start asking rhettorical questions like “what content can’t be designed for a range of viewports?”, you’re right… but responsive design isn’t necessarily the end-all-be-all solution that you’re suggesting. There’s still lots of room our there for dedicated solutions – mobile sites designed ONLY for mobile browsers, tablet sites designed only for tablets, etc… Responsive isn’t a magic bullet, it’s a cheap thrill (no offense to cheap thrills, I love em’).

Here’s just a few rebuttals you might offer. Responsive design is a affordable solution, but far from a perfect solution. Mobile browsers (in most cases) still need to download the entire webpage. Design and content is “ported”, not created for each device, as it should be in a perfect world; And managing multiple layouts via media-queries just makes for more work in the long run. There are more arguments against responsive… but they all come down to one basic idea: it’s awesome, but it’s not ideal in every single scenario you can conjure up.

Keep in mind that I’m designing all of my themes to be responsive over the next year (or at least I plan to)... so if anyone’s an advocate for the big move to Responsive, it’s me… still, you’ve gotta be honest with yourself on this stuff. There’s always room for improvement, and not a month goes by without some new buzz word. Now it’s responsive, but tomorrow it’ll be something else. Is it the way of the future… I think so. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves by saying that non-responsive designs are somehow irrelevant now.

Agree? Disagree?

i sent you an email.

digitalimpact said

epicera said
It’s definitely going to become a standard feature over the next year though… people are on their phones/tablets/eReaders now, it’s time we meet them there

... until customers figure out that it only has to do with the layout, there’s nothing else mobile about it (bandwidth consumption stays the same).

Don’t get me wrong, I think great responsive design is hard to achieve and I have respect for anyone entering and succeeding in these new found lands (boy will this post sound weird in a year or so).

But if it’s for people that are mobile ‘for real’ (i.e. not on wireless but on data plan from carrier), I still opt to serve them a true (stand alone) mobile site, where they don’t download unnecessary assets

From this perspective, what do you guys think? Is it all just hype?

A proper responsive design should also change what content is delivered, so should a combination of CSS , JS & php. Unfortunately most purchases of themes won’t have any idea of this differentiation, and will be delivering a less than optimal experience for their mobile audience.