Wednesday, 4 July 2012

baked byEthan Marcotte

“Mobile broke everything,” is how the saying goes. Of course, the old saying was “the web broke everything.” Before that, I’m sure someone was grousing about internal combustion engines, steam power, and/or the wheel.

Nothing ever really breaks, of course.

I mean, really: the web’s still here. But maybe we broke. Or at least, we’re left to rediscover a new way to work. Or maybe an older, better way we’d forgotten. Because, really, I think that’s what mobile truly broke: we’re realizing megabyte-heavy pages don’t cut it on poor connections; busy pages make for poor experiences on smaller screens; progressive enhancement can help us design across an impressively broad spectrum of devices. We’re rediscovering focus. How to do more with a little bit less. Faster frameworks, leaner pages, less cruft.

Which, when you think about it, doesn’t sound broken at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.