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"Mobile first" was a term popular among those who don't write code, but loved saying it in meetings. As a dev, I've never embraced the idea. It's over-compensa

"Mobile first" was a term popular among those who don't write code, but loved saying it in meetings. As a dev, I've never embraced the idea. It's over-compensating for the days when mobile was an afterthought. If all you've done is make desktop the afterthought, you haven't solved anything. The sites I've worked on - big, small, popular, unpopular, all have significant numbers of important desktop and laptop visitors (important as in low bounce rate, high engagement). I spend time building interesting things for their screens because I want their return visits. I prefer "accessible first" or "mobile-friendly". Not that I use catch phrases. Nothing needs to be "first". You don't need an ideology, you need results. > "no one wants to spend their time retrofitting a desktop-centric site to work on mobile devices!" That sounds like a problem from 15 years ago. Today it's reasonable to develop the desktop layout and mobile response at the same time. We have better tools such as flexbox to get mobile layouts working out of the gate.

oblak 4y ago
I just wanted to say that I agree with you and help you with the over eager downvoters
pupppet 4y ago
Totally agree, 'mobile first' somehow become 'desktop non-existent'.
youngtaff 4y ago
When 75% plus of visitors to consumer facing sites – shopping, media etc – are on mobile devices then it's pretty clear to me that mobile first should be the focus. All too often I come across sites that were designed on desktop and mobile was an afterthought, and it quite clearly shows
- exodust 4y ago
  > When 75%....are on mobile devices Before making big generalized claims, you need to define "mobile device". If you're including tablets and iPads, a lot of those devices have large screens which are closer to desktop or laptop anyway. Your "mobile first" decision to banish the top navigation to a burger menu, for example, might actually leave enough empty space which would have fitted the navigation you just sent to burger land. "[Device]-first" isn't a thing that comes to the rescue of anyone. If anything, starting with the big-screen design, allows all possible features to be clearly realized, sorted, and refined. After which, optimization and reduction can happen for whatever small-screen channels are needed. Chipping away at the block of marble is a reasonable and sensible approach. Starting with a full set of features and presentation is more beneficial for understanding your product goals. Mobile-first inhibits the potential and limits exploration, by enforcing a restraint at the outset. Imagine if the classic painters used the equivalent of "mobile first", let's call it "window first", in anticipation of satisfying the 50% of people who view the artwork from outside the gallery, peering through a window. Or take it further and try "postage stamp first" because more people will buy postage stamps than visit the gallery. Each to their own as always!
  - youngtaff 4y ago
    For most of the sites I work with (large retailers and publishers) tablets are a tiny percentage of traffic often 1-2% at most and I don’t consider them as being mobile Starting with a big screen design might allow “all possible features to be clearly realized, sorted, and refined” but all too often it leads to unoptimized mobile experiences because compromises are made to make the desktop experience adapt to mobile And when 75% of the audience aren’t going to get that full experience I argue that designing a great experience for the 25% to the compromise of the 75% is a flawed approach
    - exodust 4y ago
      The claim that only 25% of visitors are on a laptop or desktop, would not be accurate for many shopping sites. I'm not sure why you're generalizing about website traffic. Laptops are not unpopular devices. People use them at work, at home, to shop, browse, everything. People love their laptops. At work, people love dual monitors etc. That won't change because humans need sufficient screen real estate to get stuff done and display documents etc. As I said before, quality of users is also important. You should analyze your traffic to see bounce rate and spending for mobile phone vs everything else. You seem to think that a mobile layout will be "compromised" if the design starts with the full website layout. This is old thinking. If the brief says "we want a strong website on all devices" then your designer and devs will make sure the site is great on all layouts. Otherwise they're not doing their job. There's no universal law that says unless you design for mobile first, it will suffer. Your idea is left over from years ago when mobile phone usage was low, and mobile browsers were poor. Remember when there was a delay between pressing a button and the action, because iOS was "waiting" to see if was a double-tap or not. The compromise was built-in. Add to that the crippled cache and memory abilities of phones, and the preference of mobile manufacturers to push people to native app stores, nobody should be surprised that mobile browsing was/is compromised by its very nature.
      - youngtaff 4y ago
        I work with large ecommerce sites (mainly US, UK & EU), for most of them around 75% of visitors are on phones and it’s pretty much the same picture for every consumer facing site I work with. There’s some variation depending on the demographics e.g. sites with a large audience amongst the older population tend to have more tablet, and laptop visitors. You can check the mobile vs desktop split for most sites using the Chrome UX Report You say my logic is flawed but too many sites are designed with large screens in mind and then retrofitted to mobile with poor outcomes for the user experience

oblak 4y ago

I just wanted to say that I agree with you and help you with the over eager downvoters

pupppet 4y ago

Totally agree, 'mobile first' somehow become 'desktop non-existent'.

youngtaff 4y ago

When 75% plus of visitors to consumer facing sites – shopping, media etc – are on mobile devices then it's pretty clear to me that mobile first should be the focus. All too often I come across sites that were designed on desktop and mobile was an afterthought, and it quite clearly shows

exodust 4y ago
> When 75%....are on mobile devices Before making big generalized claims, you need to define "mobile device". If you're including tablets and iPads, a lot of those devices have large screens which are closer to desktop or laptop anyway. Your "mobile first" decision to banish the top navigation to a burger menu, for example, might actually leave enough empty space which would have fitted the navigation you just sent to burger land. "[Device]-first" isn't a thing that comes to the rescue of anyone. If anything, starting with the big-screen design, allows all possible features to be clearly realized, sorted, and refined. After which, optimization and reduction can happen for whatever small-screen channels are needed. Chipping away at the block of marble is a reasonable and sensible approach. Starting with a full set of features and presentation is more beneficial for understanding your product goals. Mobile-first inhibits the potential and limits exploration, by enforcing a restraint at the outset. Imagine if the classic painters used the equivalent of "mobile first", let's call it "window first", in anticipation of satisfying the 50% of people who view the artwork from outside the gallery, peering through a window. Or take it further and try "postage stamp first" because more people will buy postage stamps than visit the gallery. Each to their own as always!
- youngtaff 4y ago
  For most of the sites I work with (large retailers and publishers) tablets are a tiny percentage of traffic often 1-2% at most and I don’t consider them as being mobile Starting with a big screen design might allow “all possible features to be clearly realized, sorted, and refined” but all too often it leads to unoptimized mobile experiences because compromises are made to make the desktop experience adapt to mobile And when 75% of the audience aren’t going to get that full experience I argue that designing a great experience for the 25% to the compromise of the 75% is a flawed approach
  - exodust 4y ago
    The claim that only 25% of visitors are on a laptop or desktop, would not be accurate for many shopping sites. I'm not sure why you're generalizing about website traffic. Laptops are not unpopular devices. People use them at work, at home, to shop, browse, everything. People love their laptops. At work, people love dual monitors etc. That won't change because humans need sufficient screen real estate to get stuff done and display documents etc. As I said before, quality of users is also important. You should analyze your traffic to see bounce rate and spending for mobile phone vs everything else. You seem to think that a mobile layout will be "compromised" if the design starts with the full website layout. This is old thinking. If the brief says "we want a strong website on all devices" then your designer and devs will make sure the site is great on all layouts. Otherwise they're not doing their job. There's no universal law that says unless you design for mobile first, it will suffer. Your idea is left over from years ago when mobile phone usage was low, and mobile browsers were poor. Remember when there was a delay between pressing a button and the action, because iOS was "waiting" to see if was a double-tap or not. The compromise was built-in. Add to that the crippled cache and memory abilities of phones, and the preference of mobile manufacturers to push people to native app stores, nobody should be surprised that mobile browsing was/is compromised by its very nature.
    - youngtaff 4y ago
      I work with large ecommerce sites (mainly US, UK & EU), for most of them around 75% of visitors are on phones and it’s pretty much the same picture for every consumer facing site I work with. There’s some variation depending on the demographics e.g. sites with a large audience amongst the older population tend to have more tablet, and laptop visitors. You can check the mobile vs desktop split for most sites using the Chrome UX Report You say my logic is flawed but too many sites are designed with large screens in mind and then retrofitted to mobile with poor outcomes for the user experience