How important is responsive design?

  • Resolved Bad_Egg

    (@bad_egg)


    8 years, 3 months ago

    With all the talk about Google giving priority to responsive design websites, and with the ubiquity of tablets and other mobile devices, why are most of the WP themes, even the newest ones, not responsive? Even WP’s latest yearly iteration, Twenty Sixteen, is not. (WP advertise it as “mobile-first” but when I tested the demo on my tablet, all that happened was that the right sidebars disappeared, which strikes me as not good.)

    This is making me wonder how important RD really is?

    I am embarking on a complete redesign of my website and I have to make a decision NOW about whether to go responsive or not. My current site (http://www.mademers.com) actually works well on tablets, but, as it is just shrinking to fit, it does not work well on mobile phones.

    Whether I go responsive or not will decide which software I will use: (not responsive) a mix of WebPlus + WP (but the designs of each better integrated than they are now) or (responsive) WP only.

    Your feedback is appreciated.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Volunteer Moderator

    8 years, 3 months ago

    Twenty Sixteen is responsive, as are most recent themes. What was your criteria for determining that they aren’t?

    A responsive theme adapts and adjusts to most screen sizes without simply forcing the desktop view onto the tiny screen.

    Responsive design is *very* important. Searches from mobile devices on the top search engines give priority to responsive/mobile sites, and viewers vastly prefer the experience to zooming in, swiping all of the place, and struggling to tap super-tiny links.

    Thread Starter Bad_Egg

    (@bad_egg)

    8 years, 3 months ago

    Hi James,

    When I checked the preview of Twenty Sixteen on my tablet the page wouldn’t scroll down. And the sidebars (recent post, recent comments) that I could see when viewed in my laptop browser disappeared when viewed on my tablet. Yet when I downsized my laptop browser, the page scrolled and I could see the sidebars at bottom. That lead me to believe Twenty Sixteen was not responsive on mobile.

    The confusion further arose because I also checked out Responsive Brix, but in that instance I checked the demo from the developer’s site, not the preview on WP. In that case the demo worked great on my tablet. (Twenty Sixteen doesn’t have a demo, just a preview.) Thus I wrongly concluded that Twenty Sixteen was not responsive like Responsive Brix is.

    I just checked the WP preview for Responsive Brix and it is having the same issues: freezing, inability to scroll. So the problem is with the WP site: previews are freezing when viewed on a tablet, at least on my Fire, which I am told has a crappy browser (but in all fairness demo sites are working and I have checked a few now while writing this).

    Thank you for responding and once again helping me toward a correct understanding of a problem.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Volunteer Moderator

    8 years, 3 months ago

    Yeah, the previews need some work here, they’re on the long list to improve. 🙂

    If you’re searching here, it’s much easier to just trust the feature filter: https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/responsive-layout/

    Thread Starter Bad_Egg

    (@bad_egg)

    8 years, 3 months ago

    Hi James,

    I searched by using “responsive design” as a keyword; didn’t think to use the feature filter. Much better, thank you.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Volunteer Moderator

    8 years, 3 months ago

    You’re welcome!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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