Is Responsive Worth It?

[Azercii]

Little topic that's gonna bug me if I don't ask

 

 

I'm trying to learn static layouts, and I'm just getting the hang of them. A few friends are telling me to go responsive to accommodate mobile/tablet users? I can see it from a business sites perspective where you want all types of users and with ease of access, but my site is going to be a gaming modification community, where mobile users aren't really the target audience as it's quicker and easier to download them on the PC than a Phone. I was going to accommodate that audience by allowing them very basic usage (chat, forums, account) and leave off the heavy parts like the gallery, and downloads.

 

 

 

Am I going in the wrong direction? Should I be heading down the responsive route? I've literally only just started the first page for the site, but it'd mean re-learning a whole bunch more new stuff which'd prolong the sites progress.

 

 

 

Just looking for a little advice in which direction to head

[requinix]

It would be great if you could do responsive now, but it that will add a lot more time until you can release then you should put that off until the next iteration. At least you'll have something out there sooner rather than later. Besides, many phones and tablets are capable of handling "desktop" layouts without inconveniencing the user too much; depends on the content but a bit of zooming and scrolling isn't that bad.

 

And while the site is out there you can set up some metrics to see how people actually are using your site. Maybe there are many more mobile users than you thought. Maybe fewer.

[Azercii]

I have tested it myself on several handheld devices and all seems well, but it all depends on the user and how they feel about scrolling and zooming. I'll probably look at responsive in the future if, like you said, there is a lot of mobile traffic.

 

I'll learn while I'm going though, just so I'm ready for when I do go ahead with it

[Stefany93]

I agree with @requinix, unfortunately 13% of the website traffic comes from mobile devices such as tablets and phones and over 50% of the traffic coming from young people (-30) if from mobile devices, so nowadays going responsive is a must unfortunately.

 

I read an article recently where the author said that when there were just 5 browsers to test, " We programmers lived in the golden age of web development"