Re:Mobile-First CSS: Is It Time for a Rethink?
by adamredwoods on Sunday June 19, 2022 @10:22PM
(#31805661)
Component level layout should not be adaptive, but I've seen situations where a component migrates a long distance from the initial placement when switching to an alternate media-width.
>> I would recommend for larger teams to not completely discount adaptive mobile sites
Quality developers know when to use what. It's the legacy code that bites us.
I'm fairly convinced at this point that with enough developers, the best approach is adaptive if you plan on building a web app with considerable complexity. Completely isolated development, fully custom design and code for mobile.
With an adaptive site you have the choice to include or exclude elements which may have a major performance impact on the app, including for instance: entire view/component trees, media queries, heavy JS like graphs or ads. You also get to make web-unfriendly decisions like using a custom renderer if you think it will produce a higher quality experience, like Flipboard's React Canvas from several years ago: https://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web
Overall it's still very context dependent, but I would recommend for larger teams to not completely discount adaptive mobile sites if they're looking to build the highest quality mobile experiences.