Responsive design vs. Separate site: Google Chrome Sync Tabs

The debate between which strategy to approach for a responsive site is alive and well. The growing support for Responsive Web Design strongly indicates that many designers and developers truly think that designing for all viewport sizes at the same time, while a very challenging task, is the way to go (the view that I share).

This debate is all the more relevant with the two very well-run US presidential campaign adopting these very different strategies.

I just found another benefit of responsive design – it works much better with Google Chrome’s synced tabs across devices.

If you’re like me, you will browse your Twitter feed on the go and click on interesting articles to read on your phone. If an article is too long or is something you’d like to read later, you will just leave that tab open. Once back on desktop, you would fire up Chrome and go to “Other Devices” to bring up the article on the larger screen.

This is an amazing way to save time as I no longer have to email myself the article or even use Pocket.

This is where responsive design really trumps mobile site. I’ll use The Atlantic as the example here. As I initially opened an article on my phone, I am redirected to its mobile site, http://m.theatlantic.com. As a user, I’m happy as the content are laid out beautifully and neatly. This is all fine and good until I open the site up with Chrome on my desktop. Chrome simply grabs the URL from its mobile cousin browser and display that. As a result, the mobile version is displayed on my 23″ screen in all its glory (or lack thereof). I am less happy now because I feel that my experience has been reduced because I don’t have the beautiful typeface or layout that is designed for a larger viewport.

If The Atlantic had used the responsive design strategy however, it will be the same URL on any device and my browser will just magically know which layout it needs to adapt to for the most optimized reading experience that had been intended by the designers.

I am still surprised at how many big news websites that still do not have responsive design. While it is true that a separate mobile site approach has its merits, I think that it is an approach that was based on the past when responsive design was not a thing. To stay ahead with the web though, we need to made some real efforts to make our content responsive. I am sure the people at the NYTimes or The Atlantic already know this and probably are spending a lot of money trying to concert their content to be responsive. Meanwhile, we now have another argument to make for responsive design.

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