Why is it still necessary to adapt sites for mobiles?!

[PhilipB]

Don't shoot me but...
I think my web pages look fine on all my devices, old and new, incl. iPhones 4, 5c and 7+, old Samsung Galaxy GT-S5830i (Android 2.3.6) Samsung Galaxy A40, Amazon Fire tablet etc. My daughter also says they are fine on her Pixel mobile. The old Samsung was the only one that appeared to show only some of the page, but that was fixed by pinching to zoom out. Then all the other pages came up ok straight away. so... why are people still saying you have to have adapt websites for mobiles - it doesn't seem necessary any more, with larger screens and higher dpi.
I haven't made any breakpoints, FlexBoxes or CSS Grids - but testing it on our own devices it looks fine. All the devices automatically resize all the pages to fit. The text is readable, though small on the older devices - but you can rotate to landscape and then it is ok - and my wife and I are in our 60s so our eyes are not as good as they used to be!
So why are search engines so concerned about it? To me, the word 'responsive' indicates that the site should respond to the device - and they seem to already.
It's not finished yet but here's the site: www.pims-hub.org.uk (Yeah, I know some pages have a lot of unbroken-up text, but I'm working on it!)
Any thoughts folks?
Thanks.
Philip

[jerryco]

Well, my signature (below) has been the same for years...

I found a friendly person to make an extension to remind users to rotate their device when they're on a phone in portrait mode...

[crispy68]

I've taken a look at your site on my Galaxy S20 Note and here are my 2cents worth.

Although I can for the most part read your text, it is small. Too small for a phone. Just because it is readable doesn't mean the size is ideal. The point of creating responsive design is so that your site looks good and readable on all devices without having to pinch zoom to read/see something. This makes the user experience the best it can be on any device and has become part of creating responsible design. Now more than ever people are using their phones and tablets to search which is why so much emphasis is being put on creating a good user experience. I also believe your site should look good whether viewed in portrait or landscape mode and not designed simply for 1 orientation.

Another big reason is that Google will not rank your site as high if it is not considered mobile friendly. Like it or not, that's just the way it is and won't be changing anytime soon. So if that is important to you then it is something you need to think about.

[rogerl]

Personally I think the search engines have too much power. They have positioned themselves now so we can't do much without them so I do the minimum to keep them happy.
I had to re-write my site twice, once to come over to Web Builder (no regret) and then finally caved in and re - wrote and made responsive for smaller screens using the older techniques. Some of my pages I didn't bother as they looked fine to me under testing and anyone that doesn't know to rotate a phone and use finger movements these days probably should not have the device. Some pages I just inserted text at the top to say "I look better in Landscape". I must say I did enjoy the process , both times, and learnt a lot. It is fascinating what we can achieve these days in presenting information and services to the wide world using this software and the different techniques that people use.
However presentation is everything if you want the user's attention, and the easier you make it for them the better. If that gets you a higher ranking with the search engine then that's a bonus.

[alan_sh]

View on a Galaxy S10:

[PhilipB]

Thanks for your replies guys. Well at least you didn't shoot me!
1. Puzzled why alan_sh is only seeing a bit of the page on the S10 when crispy68 on S20 seems to view it ok. If you pinch to zoom out, do all subsequent pages load showing the whole page?
2. And when I tried Google's own mobile-friendly test and got "Page is mobile friendly"! (One of my other websites didn't - as I expected.) So does that mean for Google SEO I don't need to bother creating breakpoints etc? I accept that the writing will be a bit on the small side in portrait. I agree with rogerI on that one!
3. I will try some pages with different breakpoints, but others are too complicated. I spend several hours today trying to make the index page fit on 320 and ended up with some bugs like a line that couldn't be seen in WYSWIG but uploaded. I couldn't find in in the object manager at all. And some shapes uploaded differently to how they appeared in the programme. Then when I viewed it on my tablet and it didn't look right, so I'd have to start from scratch to do another one at a different screen size - since the tablet insisted on using the breakpoint on in portrait when the original was fine on it.

[alan_sh]

I was using the Responsive DEsign Mode option in FireFox which simulates different sizes. That has worked for me in the past.

Have you tried just adding a layout grid and adding the items into it? It doesn't take too long and means no messing around with breakpoints (unless you want to).

ALan

[PhilipB]

@alan_sh
Yes, I've discovered the Firefox responsive page too - very useful! But it seems the S10 is the only phone which doesn't adjust the page. Very odd. Thanks for the suggestion about the layout grid. I've being trying that - a bit of a learning curve! I've noticed that if you fiddle around too much with the boxes they can get corrupted and you have to delete them and start again. Moreover, it's very annoying the way that undo doesn't work if you change views to the other breakpoints. So the only way is to keep 'saving as', otherwise you're in a right mess! I've come to the conclusion that my original design with the spokes and wheel simply doesn't work in a grid or flexbox. Even if I get it looking ok in, say, Edge or Chrome, on the mobiles it's all wrong. As I originally choose an width of 970 and font size 18, Google seems to think it's mobile friendly, so I'll see how it goes... I might try some of the other pages in a layout grid as they are more straightforward.
Cheers.
Philip

[alan_sh]

What I do with layout grids is have kust one breakpoint - the default - which I set to 1920 wide. Then I just use the layout grid to determine when to switch.

I've put up a simple template here https://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/forum ... hp?t=93336 if you want to give it a go.

Alan