
Responsive Design Won’t Fix Your Content Problem - Ashuu
http://alistapart.com/column/responsive-design-wont-fix-your-content-problem
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danso
It's astonishing how much "responsive design" gets thrown around as a
buzzword...however, unlike a lot of buzzwords, "responsive design" actually
means something and implementing it has implications systemwide...Across
legacy sites, I've almost never seen it implemented in a way that didn't hide
critical information, often because the designers and the people in charge of
the legacy CMS probably don't coordinate enough. Things like, "Make everything
that isn't in a p or image tag go to the bottom of the page" can hugely affect
the context of certain elements.

For example, I worked on a site that hand hand-coded captions for photos and
so those captions ended up having tags that were displayed:none when the
device had a low-enough width. That's not great for photos that require the
context of the captions.

~~~
kamjam
Indeed. The thing that annoys me about responsive design is when I browse on
my phone and can't find what I'm looking for so I "Request Desktop Site" and
it's the same! Grrr. Even worse when they STILL serve me all those images, but
they are just hidden, eating up my limited bandwidth. Double Grrrr.

~~~
Pxtl
Usually "Request desktop site" means booting you back to the homepage of the
desktop site.

~~~
kamjam
No, that's not correct, at least in my experience. "Request desktop site"
usually means "reload the same page, but send a User Agent string so the
server thinks I'm calling from a full desktop browser". This works for
websites where the server does some UA string sniffing and sends different
html+assets for different types of devices.

The same works in reverse. In Chrome Dev Tools I can set the UA to
iPhone/iPad/Android ([http://imgur.com/mJY6lP6](http://imgur.com/mJY6lP6)) and
I _should_ expect to see a mobile version of the site. Of course, with
Responsive this does not work since responsive looks at screen size, not UA
string.

For example, try changing your UA string in Chrome to iOS 6 and visit
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/](http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

~~~
Pxtl
I mean literally if there's a button on the page that says "I want to see the
desktop site". Those inevitably stink.

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ColinWright
Lessons I've learned the hard way that appear late in the article:

* Design your editorial workflow first

* You won’t have time to edit everything

* Plan for long-term governance

~~~
j_s
Both the OP and your reply emphasize the _what /why_... are there any
resources available explaining _how_? If not, it sounds like this is a great
opportunity for some blog posts!

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beaker52
Content shouldn't just be defecated into pretty grids, with a responsive label
slapped on it and boardroom demo.

~~~
beat
Depends. If you want to get a budget and work to do in a big corporation,
that's _exactly_ how you should do it.

You simply need to drop your petty concerns about the quality of your work at
start looking at building your own personal fiefdom within the empire. Learn
the critical formula, _success = ass_kissing + buzzword_compliance_ , and
you're off on your magical race to the middle! Within 20 years, you'll be
staring at the layoff pink slip in your hand, looking back on a life of
mediocrity and forward to being unhireable anywhere else, wondering what went
wrong.

~~~
timje1
Woah, I bet you're great fun at parties.

~~~
coldtea
I bet this tired cliche of a phrase doesn't make you very popular at parties
either.

Couldn't you stick to replying to what he said?

