[nilliams]

If I understand correctly, you are asking the browser to provide a workaround for a website that isn't optimised for mobile, and asking that browser to maintain that workaround forever?

I'm surprised they ever tried to do this in the first place.

Reddit has now had a hell of a long time to deliver a mobile-optimised site, responsive or otherwise. I feel like your criticisms would be better directed towards them.

Edit: Btw I'm sure some people may comment that it's not just Reddit and there are 1000's of sites that were more easily viewable on a text-wrapping Android browser previously. That's undoubtedly true, but how will the web ever move on from its fixed-width-desktop-sized past if we don't force the offending websites to fix their broken fixed-width styles. We can't workaround that bad idea forever.

[recursive]

It isn't even a workaround. This has worked by default in all browsers since the days of Netscape Navigator and probably before. You don't need media queries or even css.

1. Put a bunch of text in your body tag. 2. Open in a browser. 3. Resize your browser window. 4. Note the reflowing text.

This has been standard behavior for decades. I've never seen a desktop browser that doesn't work this way. Why should mobile browsers be different? (significantly worse, specifically)

[silon3]

Exactly. IMO all css/html features that conflict with this should be deprecated and REMOVED from the standard.

[spb]

Right, let me just go ahead and file an issue with the WHATWG to deprecate `width`

[coldtea]

>If I understand correctly, you are asking the browser to provide a workaround for a website that isn't optimised for mobile, and asking that browser to maintain that workaround forever?

Yeah, why not? Programs exists to help their users. I could not care less if the website developers are sloppy or whatever, if the browser can give me legible text, it should do it.

[nilliams]

Because, like the other downvoted-for-no-reason commenter posted that's great for you in the short-term but bad for all of us in the long-term. Far better if people fix their broken sites. It's analogous to why we as a web developer community suffered overall by 'supporting' IE6 with crazy fallbacks instead of just saying no.

[nitrogen]

The web, as originally envisioned, was supposed to be user agent agnostic. The user agent (AKA browser, search engine, personal AI, braille terminal, screen reader, etc.) would interpret the page and process or display it appropriately for the agent's purpose and medium. Thus, sites shouldn't have to adapt to mobile; it should be possible to write one semantic site that looks right on any device, because the user agent is supposed to do the formatting.

Removing that ability from user agents is counter to users needs and the basic design of the web.

[coldtea]

>It's analogous to why we as a web developer community suffered overall by 'supporting' IE6 with crazy fallbacks instead of just saying no.

The reason the "web developer community suffered overall by 'supporting' IE6" is because people wont and dont update their "broken sites". That's a pipe dream. Some are abandoned, others are maintained by amateurs who don't know what they're doing, others don't care, etc.

Users still want to be able to read them, and will switch to a browser that does, if yours doesn't. Unless you control all competitors and can co-ordinate a mass update, you better support them.

[nilliams]

>> The reason the "web developer community suffered overall by 'supporting' IE6" is because people wont and dont update their "broken sites". That's a pipe dream.

I meant that we wasted a lot of effort building IE6-proof sites in recent years. My analogy itself had nothing to do with updating sites. I was trying to give an example of a 'crazy web workaround' that screwed us over in the long-term.

But if we forget analogies and I address your actual claim that:

> [...] people wont and dont update their "broken sites".

We're talking about major sites here (like Reddit) where this is clearly not true as most have updated already. Reddit is something of an exception, though they are clearly working on it as the commenter that linked to the beta `m.reddit.com` has shown.

[oldmanjay]

From your perspective that is true, of course, but it is a greedy perspective that optimizes locally at a cost to the entire ecosystem.

[comex]

Personally, I find something enjoyable about viewing desktop websites on mobile and zooming in and out - something about an instinctive sense of place (navigation in two dimensions rather than the usual one of scrolling), combined with being able to navigate a truly densely packed interface on a small screen, rather than having to pare things down to some extent as you see in most mobile websites and apps, feels vaguely empowering. At its best, this creates something of an accidental zooming user interface[1]. A particularly good example is the New York Times desktop homepage, where zooming around something vaguely resembling a physical newspaper, organized by topic in a predictable layout, is just nicer than scrolling the linear list of articles on the mobile homepage, with only a few visible per screenful - it's no accident the former was featured repeatedly in earlier iPhone keynotes and advertising. These days they send mobile browsers the mobile site by default, but thankfully it has a "view desktop site" link; "modern" responsive websites may adapt better to screens of varying sizes, but they have the annoying side effect that you typically can't get to the desktop layout on mobile. (This would be pretty easy to fix for either the site or the browser, but I've never seen it implemented.)

I don't know where you got Reddit from, but it has not only a modern mobile website[2], but multiple client apps available on iOS and Android. Yet I read Reddit on my phone exclusively using the desktop site. Same goes for Hacker News and the various third-party webapps and native apps.

I've never used a non-iOS mobile OS for an extended period of time, so I don't really know what automatic reflow feels like in practice, but I can certainly imagine it would be useful to people with similar preferences to mine, in a way that mobile sites don't substitute for.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface

[2] https://m.reddit.com

[nilliams]

> I don't know where you got Reddit from

Reddit is the example given in the thread parent (luos) linked to.

> but it has not only a modern mobile website[2]

Here're the exact first words from the m.reddit.com link you posted:

"Welcome to reddit's new mobile site. This is in beta"

reddit.com does NOT redirect to this site when you visit it on mobile. The thread parent linked to is entirely about Android Chrome accommodating non-mobile optimised sites like the current reddit.com, which is the canonical example given.

[SixSigma]

http://www.reddit.com/.compact is still better

[StavrosK]

This doesn't mean "welcome to reddit's site, which is new on mobile", it means "welcome to reddit's mobile site, which we have just revamped". They've had a mobile site for years.