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Philip Millward
689 PointsMobile before desktop?
Out of curiosity, why would you design the mobile first then desktop secondary?
Jose Ramos
1,908 PointsAlways build mobile-first nowadays. If you don't, you're doing it wrong.
5 Answers
Unsubscribed User
17,284 PointsAs a general answer, mobile devices are becoming more and more the norm for viewing the web so designing mobile first assures everything will work properly with mobile devices and designing mobile code 1st allows for quicker load times on mobile devices.
Philip Millward
689 PointsThats a really good answer, I never though to think of it that way!
Stone Preston
42,016 Pointsbecause its easier to expand a mobile design into a larger design for desktop than it is to try and squish a desktop design into a mobile layout.
by working out the mobile design first, you can decide which features are necessary for the mobile layout before hand and implement the design more easily than if you had to start with the desktop design and decide what all needed to fit inside the mobile layout, which features to include, what you could drop etc. Then you can simply add new features once you start designing for the desktop
a larger portion of your users will also be using mobile as their main device, so its good the keep them in mind first.
Roland Studer
155 PointsThere is a whole book on this topic (http://www.abookapart.com/products/mobile-first), there are three aspects that I consider very important:
- It is necessary today to do responsive design so it also works on mobile. So you might just start with mobile.
- It is easier to make a concept how to use the additional space on larger devices, than to have a polished design that you have to scale back to fit somehow on mobile.
- And another, maybe almost the most important: If you do mobile first, it forces you to focus on the important stuff. You cannot just put everything side by side you actually have to make a decision on what is more important, on what will be displayed first.
Andrew Banks
1,403 PointsI really enjoy reading these answers. It all makes sense now, thank you everyone.
Philip Millward
689 PointsGreat, I thought that may be the case, thanks Stone.
Josh Adams
7,146 PointsJosh Adams
7,146 PointsI may be wrong, but I believe that the idea is to start simple with a mobile version and then add to make the more complex desktop version. Of course, you can do this by creating a complex website and then trying to make it fit to mobile but the idea is that it will be easier to go from a simple mobile version to a more complex desktop version easier.