Responsive Design - A comment on "Missing The Point"

I just read an interesting article on Responsive Web Design, something that we try to build into our sites here at TTD Towers. The point, as far as I can see, of the article is that sites should be device agnostic. That means that sites should not judge what hardware or software is used to access information or services, but should adapt themselves to the available resources. That could be big screen / small screen, fast connection / slow connection etc.

The commentors, referencing a second article linked in the original have instead got hooked on the sound bite:

If you could only do one thing to prepare your desktop site for mobile and had to choose between employing media queries to make it look good on a mobile device or optimizing the site for performance, you would be better served by making the desktop site blazingly fast.

Rubbish I tell you.

And why is that? Well, for the plain and simple reason that if you aren't optimising your sites to the Nth degree, you have failed web 101. I've been approaching each GIF from the ground up, shrinking them and reducing their colour palettes since before most web designers were out of short trousers. Building small, optimised HTML, CSS and JS hand in hand with highly optimised graphics where required - that doesn't need to be said does it? You don't think you win at Web Design if you don't do that? It doesn't need stating, it's a given.

So:

Yes - Responsive Design is here, it's staying, it's required. It's another thing we need to do, another step to complicate web site design and development, but another step to simplify and improve the lives of our users and that is always the point.