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by namespace 4807 days ago
This approach is the key to get things right on mobile. Because of its roots, common web development focuses on desktop first and mobile second. This usually means that we do: `loadContent(); if mobile: loadMobileContent();`. Instead we should build for mobile first and load desktop content when we encounter one: `loadContent(); if desktop: loadDesktopContent();`
1 comments

I think a lot of use cases would actually benefit from having a branch (desktop and mobile) instead of an add-on (mobile and then desktop or vice-versa) just because the experience is completely different. If we consider generic websites and blogs, the experience is so similar using responsive design is the best approach. But if we consider web apps, like those that can improve the experience using geo data, branching can be a better fit. Responsive doesn't seem like a silver bullet.
Honestly sometimes when I'm on my phone and I get a linked in email I won't click the link because the experience is so bad. I'm petty sure it starts with more than 2 possibly 4 redirects and then it shows you that spinner for a long time while it loads data. Are the ajax calls returning a lot of days that is never rendered? Are the ajax calls too slow? Why does it have to redirect so many times? Maybe if they had a mobile debugger they could figure it out.

An application like linked in should not require a native app. The website should just work well in a mobile browser.