One thing the OP overlooks is that high res images allow for resolution to be maintained when the user does pinch-to-zoom. Perhaps, downloading these larger images is actually a necessity.
Really great point. Maybe load the low res version initially and then predictively load higher resolutions as the gesture proceeds and fade between them to compensate for the latency.
I prefer designing desktop and mobile in parallel rather than one before the other. Cycling between the two seems to bring up the constraints on the ui and compromises that need to be made more quickly than proceeding one to the other. Wrote more here: http://tldr.person.sh/resource-limited-responsive-design
"Graceful degradation" and "progressive enhancement" have mostly been utter failures. Yes, they're possible, and a few sites and designers even manage to do them well without spending wads of money. But, for everyone else, it just represents an additional layer of effort without any direct benefit to themselves.
There's a point at which we should accept that our pontifications about the "ideal" design, engineered for every conceivable device and screen resolution and software platform, is just completely impractical for the majority of designers and developers.
Developers already are expected to make sites work:
- with and without Javascript;
- with IE 6 - 8, Firefox 2 - 7, Safari, Opera, Chrome, and every other two-bit browser out there;
- with readable text and fonts on systems that may or may not have particular or even common fonts installed, including Linux which can render even decent fonts nearly illegible and including the font-weight differences between MacOS and Windows;
- on screen resolutions varying from 800 x 600 to OMG x AreYouKiddingMe, without horizontal scrolling or wasting lots of screen real estate;
- without compromising people with disabilities or screen readers.
Did I miss anything?
I think these are unrealistic expectations, and I submit as evidence the great majority of websites online -- including the professionally-designed ones -- which fail catastrophically on at least one of those points.
Now, we're to be expected to make these same sites, using the same general design, work on devices with ittybitty screens and radically different physical interfaces?
No.
Here's what I hope happens instead: I hope that the concept of the CMS gets extended a little bit and begins to do a better job of abstracting the content from the design, so that sites can easily manage two or more completely different presentations designed for specific devices. (I understand Wordpress already does something like this?)
You'll have your blog or what-have-you, and your blog will have a mobile version, and a desktop version, and they will be completely and totally 100% separated from and independent of each-other.
Because any attempts to make a desktop design work at all on mobile devices without compromising the advantages of the desktop is going to result in much gnashing of teeth.
edit: I meant to add that I think the "right" way to do this is to continue to make the desktop version of a site the default, at least for now, and then check the user-agent of the request on the server. Let the server handle which layout to serve up, not Javascript, and if a mobile user changes the user-agent on their mobile browser to something which will break sites, then they should expect to get broken sites.
> Now, we're to be expected to make these same sites, using the same general design,
> work on devices with ittybitty screens and radically different physical interfaces?
No, we are not expected that. However you can have the same theme for your desktop, tablet, mobile version and the same content.
> You'll have your blog or what-have-you, and your blog will have a mobile version,
> and a desktop version, and they will be completely and totally 100% separated from
> and independent of each-other.
Oh no. This failed miserably with "accessible versions" of sites before. In most cases the moment you start to separate your content you already blew it.
We already have tools to separate content and markup from design. We have CSS media queries. There are some problems (e.g. images), but otherwise we can already make it work. Google for responsive web design, adaptive web design: there is something to learn.
> I think the "right" way to do this is to continue to make the desktop version of a site
> the default
I like the sound of this, but I'm stuck on:
"Are we OK with serving noscript desktop users what is essentially the mobile version of our site, small images and all?"
Interesting! Thanks for pointing out screen-size media selectors.
Given how on top of CSS quirksmode usually is, I wonder if there is some problem with using screen-size media selectors on mobile devices.
