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Comment by pjmo | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with those reasons at all. It looks like they tried to build their mobile site by just downsizing their desktop site instead of going mobile-first. And yea, not everything is easy and stuff may take a bit longer, but next time and the time again you get faster and faster.

Doesn't seem like that innovative of a company with a post like that.

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Responsive design isn't an "innovation". It's a presentation shortcut. 1 data source, multiple views. Considering how little of my career the idea of responsive design has even been around let along appropriate (say the 6 months to a year out of 15) I can't actually believe that the comments here so far seem to assume that responsive is the defacto approach when it's solving a problem that doesn't really exist by using a solution more complex than is needed.

With only 2% of visitors coming from mobile, why would they go mobile-first?

Sure, the design of the site might limit mobile use a bit, but it probably wouldn't cause that big of a disparity in and of itself.

Also, the post mentioned good reasons to go responsive or mobile-first and said that the benefits to a fixed layout for most pages outweighed the drawbacks for them. They have even optimized some pages for mobile where it makes sense to them.

Doing what is right for your business is more important than jumping on the newest techniques solely to be seen as "innovative".

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