Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Responsive web design
Raised as a usability problem by 67 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2012–2024), in 61 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Desktop designs squeezed onto small screens are hard to useUnreviewed
20122026- Mobile UIs shoehorned into desktop browsers, hurting usability on each platform2024-06-03
- Half-screen browser switches to mobile layout, making buttons and menus oversized and clunky2023-08-22
- Layout jumps between mobile and desktop UIs, leaving tiny page with blank space or stretched widgets2023-08-06
Mobile layouts drop features and information shown on desktopUnreviewed
20122026- Mobile layouts drop features and information that desktop versions show2016-05-21
- Users have to hunt for things in stripped-down mobile layouts2015-10-15
- Can't find what they want on mobile; desktop mode shows the same layout2013-11-21
Two-column layout forces scrolling back up to readUnreviewed
20122026- Hard to keep column meaning visible when tables scroll sideways on small screens2021-08-28
- Two-column layout forces scrolling back up to read the second column2015-02-12
- After collapsing to one column, users must scroll past nav to reach content2014-07-05
Mobile sites are tested but not used, leaving visitor problemsUnreviewed
20122026- Mobile sites are only tested, not actually used, leaving problems for visitors2013-09-09
- One site across phone and desktop reduces usefulness on both devices2013-06-27
- Mobile sites serve a dumbed-down version; users can't easily find the full site link2013-02-01
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Text is zoomed so large on a 4K screen it is hard to read2024-07-13
- Mobile UIs shoehorned into desktop browsers, hurting usability on each platform2024-06-03
- Sidebar hides itself in narrow browser windows, so UI elements disappear2023-12-29
- Half-screen browser switches to mobile layout, making buttons and menus oversized and clunky2023-08-22
- Layout jumps between mobile and desktop UIs, leaving tiny page with blank space or stretched widgets2023-08-06
- Complex layouts break or look wrong when the browser is zoomed in2023-08-05
- Zooming triggers mobile breakpoints, making text comically huge and hiding documentation content2023-07-27
- Table looks stupidly blank and sparse in landscape on a phone2023-07-05
- Responsive layouts need constant whack-a-mole tuning and debugging for little benefit2023-06-28
- Shrinking browser window makes sites switch to phone layout, hurting multitasking2023-01-13
- Navigation rearranges on resize so the user can't find where things are2022-11-23
- Responsive UIs bloat complexity and waste screen space, hurting productivity2022-05-04
- Text scaling often breaks the visual layout and functionality of sites2022-03-01
- Browser-width breakpoints force desktop users with narrow windows into bloated mobile layouts2022-02-14
- Responsive mobile layouts hide most content and break zooming2022-02-14
- Interfaces downgrade to a simplified mobile layout at small sizes, removing control from the user2021-12-07
- Web apps are hard to use on very slow cellular networks with long latency2021-09-11
- Hard to keep column meaning visible when tables scroll sideways on small screens2021-08-28
- Page content moves or reflows unexpectedly when the window is resized instead of scrolling2021-04-22
- Responsive layouts that just resize and reflow elements don't work well on tiny screens2021-04-22
- Sites shrink UI density and switch to touch layout when desktop browser window is resized2021-04-22
- Forums auto-reflow to a mobile layout on modern phones, despite having a separate mobile mode2021-04-22
- Lines stretch across wide windows, so the reader loses track of which line they are on2021-04-22
- Narrow windows make reply buttons vanish and sites become unscrollable or shift out of view2021-04-22
- Reflowing mobile layouts at high zoom make text smaller and waste space2021-04-22
- Browser resize makes wide monitors switch to a phone-style layout2021-03-31
- Pages become unscrollable, freeze, or shift out of view when resized2021-02-09
- Responsive layouts that collapse desktop columns give worse UI on every screen size2020-09-24
- Side-by-side browser windows switch to tablet layout, breaking pages that should stay in desktop mode2020-09-23
- Essential navigation disappears at half-screen widths with no indication anything is missing2019-11-10
- Responsive frameworks like Bootstrap make UIs workable on mobile but not well optimized2019-10-30
- UIs designed for one form factor work badly on others or poorly on all2019-10-25
- Layout switches to mobile view on small desktop monitors, hiding content unnecessarily2019-08-23
- Collapsed mobile layouts become an endless scrolling stream that is harder to navigate2019-06-11
- Layouts break or differ across devices, forcing scrolling, zooming, and lost screen space2019-03-05
- Page content moves around unpredictably when the window is resized or rotated, which is jarring2018-09-06
- Buttons move after pressing, so users tap ads by mistake2017-09-05
- Mobile-specific interactions on responsive pages become glitchy and hard to get right2016-06-09
- Web apps behave inconsistently across mobile browsers, breaking layouts, rendering and input2016-06-09
- Mobile layouts drop features and information that desktop versions show2016-05-21
- Responsive sites strip core features on small screens instead of staying usable2016-03-21
- At half-screen width, sites show no left margin and hide navigation behind a hamburger menu2016-01-11
- Headers and floating footers make sites hard to read and navigate on small screens2015-11-15
- Zoom doesn't work on elements users want to zoom into2015-11-04
- Users have to hunt for things in stripped-down mobile layouts2015-10-15
- Responsive sites on mobile have experience errors and fixed-width columns and tiny fonts that can't be easily worked around2015-10-15
- Two-column layout forces scrolling back up to read the second column2015-02-12
- Input fields change the page scale and confuse some users2014-12-09
- Desktop UI conventions and widgets don't work on small touch screens, so shrinking the layout is not enough2014-11-17
- Developers find the responsive image markup too complicated to get right2014-08-24