Chapter 9. Responsive Web Design
You resize the browser window and a smile creeps over your face. You’re happy: you think you are now mobile-friendly, that you have achieved your goals for the website. But there’s an ugly truth here: you will lose users and probably money if responsive web design is your entire goal and your only solution for mobile. The good news is that you can do it right, and this book is full of ideas for how to do this, such as not relying just on CSS and using server-side techniques in some situations.
In this chapter, we’ll cover the relationship between the mobile web and responsive design, starting with how to apply responsive design intelligently, why performance is so important in the mobile world, and why responsive design should not be your website’s goal, and ending with the performance issues of the technique to help us understand the problem.
The Problem
Designers and developers have been oversimplifying the challenges of mobile development since 2000, and some people now think that responsive web design is the answer to all of our problems.
We need to understand that, beyond any other goal, a mobile web experience must be lightning fast. Delivering a fast, usable, and compatible experience to all mobile devices has always been a challenge, and it’s no different when you are implementing a responsive technique. Embracing performance from the beginning is easier.
Responsive web design is great, but it’s not a silver bullet. If it’s the only weapon ...
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