Website redesign for small screens

[Frank Cox]

I mentioned a while ago that almost all of the people who view my webpage are using cell phones or tablets. According to the server log less than ten percent of the views are from desktop computers these days.

The last time I did a major redesign of my website was in 2013 and it had some elements that didn't really do much for the viewing on a small screen other than push the actual information further down or make it harder to read.

Those issues should now be solved.

[Mark Lane]

The website I use allows me to adjust or change the way the site appears on desktops, tablets and phones. I could have three different looks and information depending on what device you are using.

[Darin Steffl]

Frank, I took a look at your site on a desktop and it looks like it's only designed for mobile. I would consider doing something different where your website has both desktop and mobile layouts which is automatic based on the device it's accessed from. The site looks like it's still in the 90s based on the design. Just an opinion that it might help to modernize it a bit.

[Mike Blakesley]

Since he has fewer than 10% of people looking at his site via desktop, he's probably not going to go to all the time and expense of making an adaptable site when it's possible to read it in the "mobile"-looking format. Just a guess.

[Frank Cox]

There really isn't an actual expense involved since I do it myself (and I run my own webserver) so it's just the inclination to do it.

I briefly considered making an adaptable website but ultimately it's not worth the effort. Almost no-one views any page on that site other than Now Playing anyway.

A friend of mine showed me how it looks on his iphone last night and as I expected it looks exactly the same as it does on my samsung so I'll call it a success.

[Mike Blakesley]

I have no idea how to make an adaptable site, and ours definitely looks better on a desktop than a phone, because it's about the most low-tech site this side of the Mississippi, but it gets the job done, loads fast and doesn't cost me anything to maintain, and nobody gripes about it, and everyone's used to it, so I guess we'll keep it.

[Bobby Henderson]

So many "modern" web sites are built using tools like WordPress and pre-built templates. The templates are coded to be "responsive," so the layouts change based on the kind of device and web browser being used to view the web page. This is done via "media queries." If the server senses you're using a smart phone to load the web page a vertical, mobile version layout will be loaded rather than a horizontal layout tuned for traditional computer screens. Stock templates are really popular because it can be a giant pain in the ass to hand-code several different web page layouts for each page based on the device type being used to view them. Really big web sites will use more advanced things like PHP to automatically assemble the web page layouts via server-side scripts.

I think "AI" could make a big impact on web development in the years ahead. The technology may do more to automate the coding process and make it easier for developers to create page layouts in more of a visual WYSIWYG method rather than pecking away writing HTML, CSS and JavaScript code.

[Darin Steffl]

We use Wix which is a modern website platform so there's no complicated coding on my side. Just pick a template, edit it, review both web and mobile versions, then publish.

[Frank Cox]

I just use https://www.vim.org/ myself.

There are no external dependencies so nothing can magically be pulled out from under me, and I can run my website on any webserver that I choose to use. (I choose to use the one in the corner about six feet from where I'm sitting right now.)