Last Updated on December 6, 2023
Creating a mobile version of your website first
While “Content First” should be your guiding principle, the term “mobile first” means creating a mobile version of your website first and then expanding to desktop and big screen. This was a good strategy – twenty yeras ago. Now you shouldn’t even need to think about it.
The first mobile phone arrived in 1996, when Nokia released the Nokia 9000 Communicator. This was one of the first mobile phones with internet browsing capabilities. Can you remember the first websites you accessed on your phone?
It might seem that it’s a bit late to be raising the question about having a responsive website or not. WordPress themes have been responsive since 2012. Most of us probably can’t remember a time when we didn’t shop, chat, or entertain ourselves without a mobile device either.
Read more about Mobile First in the classic book by Luke Wroblewski and with a foreward by Jeffrey Zeldman (2011)
We’ve moved on from the early days of “Responsive First” and then to “Device Agnostic” to today when it’s not even a topic. Your website needs to be accessible. And that’s regardless if someone is using a Tamogotchi or a 10,000 pixel wide Jumbtron.
Websites, and the tech behind them, need not only be accessible for developers – but for anyone – regardless of their age!