I think denying accessible / responsive layouts for mobile users is counter intuitive especially with how technology has advanced nowadays. You cannot deny that there are mobile users, and you cannot deny that a good portion of users are frequent mobile users. Mobile users have since multiplied ever since smartphones gave us a bigger screen, and I do not see it ever going back to being obsolete. And especially with how much easier it is to implement different style sheets for a mobile display using media queries, I feel as if more people should be aware of this and consider the fact that phones are genuinely becoming as fast and powerful in viewing websites as desktops.

Even before every site had a dedicated mobile layout, they had layouts that managed to remain static even when moving around through scrolling on a small screen. Even with some sites I actively choose to use their “desktop” view rather than their mobile view, but the concept stays the same: their site still remains accessible even with a different screen size. What I’ve been finding with newer sites, and I am not saying that it’s bad or that people should try harder, is that people are utilizing containers or elements in such a way that it becomes actually unnavigable on mobile. Boxes, when clicked, randomly change font size and links become unclickable because of an image element or impossible to click “select” options. This happens not only for small sites but for big websites too. I think for both, it's still important to keep in mind how your website works in multiple size resolutions.

A site I want to point towards for mobile navigation without an actual mobile website is Flight Rising. They do not have a specific mobile site (yet) and still their website is navigable without impossible to click images blocking links. Their layout is integral to the experience, and they aren’t wholly focused on making a mobile site, however what they did is make their games able to be played on mobile (what?!) as well as allowing mobile users to basically be able to do whatever a desktop user could, just with more zooming in and out.

I am not saying that everything should be mobile friendly. An “artistic” website that uses many images is something that I am not able to access on mobile and I know this. Someone’s very intricate collage on a webpage that uses a certain screen size to place each object is clearly thought out and I don’t want to deny anyone this freedom. However it becomes a detriment when it isn’t a purely visual medium anymore; you have written artistic content, actual written pages with information, and it is inaccessible on mobile. Even a webpage that features a game that is unplayable on mobile still includes a description, and then you still know what that website is about.

Websites that are meant to be incredibly hostile on desktop tend to carry the same weight on mobile. The key difference though is that while on desktop I am able to hover over with my mouse to find elements such as links, I am left scrambling in mobile tapping endlessly, hoping that I land on an image that will link me to another part of your site. Thinking about a hostile but still accessible mobile layout requires thinking about screen size and the different way we navigate on mobile compared to desktop.

I think it is possible to have a gaudy and garish Classic Web (™) experience on mobile, but I want to believe that the substance in these websites aren’t impossible to navigate. I am absolutely willing to go to the ends of the earth to navigate the most unnavigable websites (I sometimes use Desktop Reddit on mobile because it actually has the search within a subreddit search bar, only for it to open in the same tab with a width so thin you can hardly read the post), and I have rarely come across absolutely impossible to navigate sites. However, on those rare occasions, I just have to give up on browsing and maybe hope that the experience is better on desktop. (It most likely is, but couldn’t it be bearable on mobile in the first place?)

• How are your image elements positioned? Are they fixed? Are they floating? If they are floating arbitrarily based on percentages, will they block important links or text?
• How are your text boxes sized? Does it accommodate your text when the screen size is smaller?
• Are links easy to access and pinpoint? Can you easily tap on them with a finger on a mobile screen without zooming in to max?

To put it simply, I am not saying you should design with mobile users specifically in mind. “Mobile-first” is just way too professional for me. However, I believe that being aware of how your website looks on smaller devices can lead to a deeper understanding on how coding works, how [div] placement and order matters and overall ensures that a floating image you have isn’t covering up every inch of your site.

• Screenfly: To test your site at different sizes. This site has “Scrolling: Off” as a default, so be sure to check it on to see how your entire site looks if some elements are off the page!
• Media Query for Mobile A great article describing how you can use Media Queries in your CSS stylesheet to make certain elements change whenever the screen is at a specific screen size, such as a Phone. It doesn’t touch on how to use media queries to define a separate stylesheet for mobile sites though, which is my personal method.
• W3 @Media Rule: W3Schools tutorial on Media Queries, with lots of examples and different applications of it! This also mentions how to use Media Queries to “activate” another stylesheet when at a specific size dimension. This is more beginner friendly and has code examples to take away.