[duhoang]

Is anyone else have the opinion that Responsive Web Design is a fad?

It seems that you are better served if you design your mobile site in the style of an App, and your website the traditional 960px grid. Tablets handle the desktop site okay for the most part.

[akamaka]

I hope it's not a fad!

I'm not at all a fan of sites that look like mobile apps. I want the web on my phone, period. Responsive design gives me the full website with the same information architecture, with the bonus of a more mobile-friendly layout.

I'm using it for all my web design work (well, as much as clients will allow me), and I hope everyone else will, too!

[creativeembassy]

I used responsive design for my resume site (shameless plug): http://judy.github.com

It's not perfect, but I wanted to make sure that potential employers could at least read my site anywhere, even on mobile browsers. And I think that's more important. For content-based sites, more designers are moving past pixel-perfect designs, and more on flexible designs that don't necessarily look identical everywhere. They look GOOD in any environment, including odd browser sizes. It's more pragmatic.

If your website is actually an internet app, then I would prefer a native app for mobile OR the app designed for the mobile browsers, like you said.

[jordanlev]

I think it's a fad. I'm a big fan of it though and I don't think there's anything wrong with fads in design -- designers don't want to keep doing the same stuff over and over again (I presume).

Maybe you're a busy designer and don't have time (or desire) to always experiment with new techniques. If all of a sudden your industry peers getting excited about something, it's like a signal that says it's okay for you to try this out. I'm not sure if it's a "make efficient use of my time" heuristic about what you should devote your attention to, or a "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" safe bet thing. Probably a little of both.

[duhoang]

This is true, and I'm actually curious enough to want to build a Responsive Design website.

But the problem with fads is that they go out of style, so if in two years this whole phenomenon blows over, we are stuck with a large responsive website that we sunk all that time and money into and it just looks dated.

[chunkyslink]

It doesnt matter if its responsive or not, any design will look dated after a while.

[damirkotoric]

I don't think that responsive web design is a fad. No way. I don't want to download an app for every website that is out there. I want to simply visit the same sites that I do on my desktop and receive the same content in a way that is pleasant to view on the device that I'm using.

This isn't a Web 2.0-like design style that comes and goes. I'm sure the techniques will evolve in time but I can't see us ever going back to fixed width layouts.

[duhoang]

Thanks for everyone's thoughtful responses.

I'm researching Responsive Web Design as an option for a large e-commerce site. But for me, for a large site with a lot of dynamic content and functionality, it doesn't seem ideal to simply shrink it down to one column.

And I also wonder about the amount of time it takes to create designs taking all screen sizes into consideration.

Anyways, thanks again.

[danneu]

There are frameworks like Skeleton and Zurb's Foundation that handle the media queries and resizing/restyling for you, you just have to use their markup. And what they do out of the box is pretty much enough unless you want to hand-tweak a style down the road.

Also, responsive design doesn't have to be about getting your website to work on your 2001 Nokia brick's display. A good first step in responsive design is just to take advantage of the full width of the device your user is using up until a point. A lot of websites I view from my netbook could take advantage of just one media query: a full-sized design for large screens and then a fluid width design for anything smaller. I find a lot of websites give me a horizontal scrollbar on the 10' screen.

[rimantas]

You don't need to take "all" screen sizes into consideration. Just choose a few breaking points roughly equivalent to desktop, tablet and phone screens. This combined with fluid designs will let you to accommodate most of the variations quite well.

[stc]

You can do much more than just changing the column numbers or width, you can alter any styles.

[ceol]

I think it's a tool that shouldn't be applied to every project. Obviously someone like Amazon wouldn't (and shouldn't) be able to use the same template for both their mobile and desktop sites, but smaller sites most definitely benefit from keeping everything together.

[chunkyslink]

> It seems that you are better served if you design your mobile site in the style of an App

I think this is true but it is also much more expensive to do. So to answer your question no I dont think it is a fad but is good at bridging the gap between the two.