Mobile Specific Sites Hurt

I've said it before I don't want a different experience on mobile vs desktop. I always am scrolling around a mobile version of a site to find the link to get to the full site because whoever designed it deemed that I as a mobile user wouldn't appreciate the functionality the site brought. I still agree with the responses to Jakob Nielson's recent publication that we should have mobile versions of our sites. I agree whole-heartedly with the responses from smashing magazine here and Josh Clark and many others. It's encouraging to see the flood of people coming out to contradict the uncharacteristically unwise council from this UX giant. Here Bruce Lawsen gives a great recap of the whole story and the points argued by both sides.

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Why We Shouldn't Make Separate Mobile Websites | Smashing Magazine
There has been a long-running war going on over the mobile Web: it can be summarized with the following question: “Is there a mobile Web?” That is, is the mobile device so fundamentally…

Josh Clark responds to Jakob Nielson's Mobile Stance

Nielson recently stated that he thinks we should keep building a mobile version of a site that is trimmed down and optimized for mobile, and a full version. This contradicts the growing momentum in the industry regarding among other things Responsive Web Design. Josh Clark, another expert in Mobile and Usability, correctly dissects Nielson's stance and explains why he's seeing things backwards in this article at Net Mag.

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Nielsen is wrong on mobile | Opinion | .net magazine
Designer, developer and mobile maven Josh Clark tells us that rather than stripping down, we should be asking how we can do more with the mobile experience

Link: Working with media queries and min-width

Great thought about designing for mobile first, and using the default block level styles for the block-level elements in our mobile version since they all already have the 100% width and are, well, block-level. Floating elements is such a part of a site design that we can write less code by starting with Mobile first.

Also a great demo linked: View Responsive Demo using @media and min-width.

Link: Working with media queries and min-width – (http://www.unmatchedstyle.com/news/working-with-media-queries-and-min-width.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UnmatchedStyle+%28Unmatched+Style+%7C+CSS+Design+Gallery+and+Design+Inspiration.%29) from (author unknown) at Unmatched Style