Re: [gentoo-user] Major site redesign, SEO, and 301 redirects

[Mick]

On Friday 02 Oct 2015 00:00:08 Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 01, 2015 at 03:35:48PM +0100, Mick wrote
>
> > PS.  I hope someone will show them the door if they suggest designing
> > a new Flash based web interface ...
>
>   Especially true given that Ipads/Iphones do not support Flash.  Another
> major problem is websites that parse the user agent, and assume that any
> browser they don't recognize is a mobile device.  It's a standing joke
> amongst geeks... see https://xkcd.com/869/ and https://xkcd.com/1174/
> Back in the day when "smartphones" only had 320x240 pixel screens, a
> separate mobile site may have been necessary.

I think the reason was that at the time we did not have CSS3 and responsive 
web design was not available for the majority of CMS themes.  Many web 
designers were providing a separate generic style sheet for mobile browsers.  
If for some reason the browser was not able to process the desktop style sheet 
it would drop to the mobile style sheet.  I am sure I have seen this happening 
with Opera.  With responsive design it is left to the device to resize the 
layout elements, which is a relief for the web developers - they now only have 
to sniff MSIE8 and friends and send to them a completely different (crippled) 
layout that they are able to render.  :-D

-- 
Regards,
Mick