[duckmysick]

> so you can zoom in and out as necessary

That's the thing - it shouldn't be necessary. I don't do that on desktop browsers; why should mobile devices be any different? If the site is not legible, I set the desired zoom once and I'm done. There's no need to go back and forth.

Now, I can't do that if the elements stay mismatched on mobile. I have to zoom in and then back when I want to interact with small elements - each time. It gets old when I have to click tiny links or upvote arrows more than a few times. It's jarring and not a good user experience.

> And, of course, using the same header pixel height for portrait vs landscape, making the latter practically unusable.

The floating header issue notwithstanding (I don't like them either), this is exactly why the web designers should tailor their elements to different viewports.

> It's generally better to have a site that obeys the standards

Yes, and that also includes accessibility guidelines. Compatibility with keyboard navigation is one of them, but so is the size and spacing of the controls, links, and buttons.

[SilasX]

True. Zooming in shouldn’t be necessary. And mobile sites shouldn’t use floating headers or footers. And they shouldn’t hijack interface modes. And they should pick sizes that don’t feel like a straitjacket or make it seem like you’re peering at it through blinds. And they should be accessible and standards compliant.

But I wasn’t comparing to the three or four mobile-optimized sites that satisfy all that. I was referring to the more typical millions that don’t.

And yes, given how bad they are, I’d much rather have suboptimal design that I can recover from with a pinch or a double tap than one I can’t.

What would you cite as an example of a mobile site that is more usable than this one?

[duckmysick]

> What would you cite as an example of a mobile site that is more usable than this one?

This one being the Italian one from the submission or the Hacker News itself? I'm assuming the Italian one. Off the top of my head, sites with good mobile version and similar structure (lots of text and links) are Wikipedia and The Guardian. One tiny nitpick are tables with multiple columns in Wikipedia articles. This is a common struggle and I haven't found an elegant way of showing data-dense tables on mobile screens.

But other than that, all the elements on both of these sites are big enough, I don't have to zoom in, I don't have to scroll sideways, there are no floating elements, and they have distinctive style. They even work well with a dark mode add-on on Mobile Firefox.

[SilasX]

Yes, Wikipedia is one of the better ones! But even so, I still find myself switching to the desktop version whenever I need to link a specific section, or get more of the text in view, or view the article in a different language, or not lose my section when come to a page via the back button.

I checked out Guardian.co.uk (assuming that's what you meant), and yes, it is a pretty well designed site that works great on and doesn't seem to even distinguish mobile vs desktop users. But still, this is about the only mobile site I couldn't find anything wrong with. This isn't the typical 99% site.