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I start with desktop layouts, create that, then make it responsive for mobile devices of all sizes. I'm often only given a desktop design for a page, and I'm fi

I start with desktop layouts, create that, then make it responsive for mobile devices of all sizes. I'm often only given a desktop design for a page, and I'm fine with that. "Mobile first" is not the right way to approach the problem. I dislike desktop layouts that were obviously "mobile first" and only look like a wider version of a mobile layout. It's just the wrong way to do things. It's very easy to use media queries to make all the content of a desktop design fit into a mobile layout. I really don't understand the disconnect about this. I manage to get full functionality in both desktop and mobile devices of all sizes, but others cry "mobile first!" like if you don't do it that way, then you're doing it wrong? It's nonsense. "Mobile first" almost always leads to sub-par desktop experiences, and that's a shame. My favorite challenge is a design meant to be printed on a single page. The page also has to load on desktop and mobile browsers. With the printed page, the content absolutely cannot overflow even though it's dynamic content and could have text of any length, or list items of any length (scaling is used to a point, but often some items must be omitted from the layout). So in this case, it's absolutely "print first", not "mobile first". And yet I manage to make a perfectly good mobile responsive layout and a desktop layout out of a "print first" page.

LocalPCGuy 3y ago
The reasoning behind mobile-first was exactly what you say is "easy" and I disagree - it is not always "easy" to shrink contents of complex desktop layouts into a mobile one. Mobile first helps figure out the simplest possible version of a design. And whether building mobile first or desktop first isn't really a design choice, that's a development choice, and either way of building a site (as long IMO as you don't mix/match) is equally valid) and the same goal can be accomplished from a technical perspective. I agree though, that doesn't mean we need dumbed down desktop layouts or scaled up mobile versions, it just means we need to consider both and design accordingly. Mobile first is fine as the starting point, there are a lot of valid points to that design paradigm. But that is just the "first" part, then there are the rest of the parts to account for all viewport sizes.

LocalPCGuy 3y ago

The reasoning behind mobile-first was exactly what you say is "easy" and I disagree - it is not always "easy" to shrink contents of complex desktop layouts into a mobile one. Mobile first helps figure out the simplest possible version of a design. And whether building mobile first or desktop first isn't really a design choice, that's a development choice, and either way of building a site (as long IMO as you don't mix/match) is equally valid) and the same goal can be accomplished from a technical perspective. I agree though, that doesn't mean we need dumbed down desktop layouts or scaled up mobile versions, it just means we need to consider both and design accordingly. Mobile first is fine as the starting point, there are a lot of valid points to that design paradigm. But that is just the "first" part, then there are the rest of the parts to account for all viewport sizes.