Biggest proof that this article is wrong? I'm on my phone reading the blog post and the site doesn't scale for my screen width and it is so annoying to read because I have to keep scrolling left and right to see all of the text. I got so frustrated I didnt even continue reading the article and I left the site. That is what will happen with users when a site doesn't display properly for their device, it's a fact.
Yep, the inline images seem to have disabled my mobile browser's magic reflow thing. On the other hand, that suggests that the article should have narrower rows of text even on desktop (95 characters per line is on the high side of recommended widths for legibility; not unreasonable, but suboptimal), and usually I prefer to read desktop sites since zooming is actually a nice way to navigate around content - better than dealing with usually buggy and often limited mobile sites. In the example in the post, I would have much preferred to double tap once to read the text on Cats who Code than to have to scroll all the way down to find awkwardly laid out sidebar content.
I sometimes do go with the regular version of a website on my phone, but generally I prefer a mobile optimized version, less ads, more readable font size, faster loading, etc. Reading HN on a phone isn't that great, I use http://cheeaun.github.com/hnmobile/#/ and added it to my home page. It makes a world of a difference, except I can't comment from the app.
Good point, but of course installing a decent browser is the counter argument. Admittedly my 3 year old Nokia may not be very representative, but its Opera Mini version solves that problem beautifully. My hunch is that it uses heuristics to find the main text area (which nearly every site has), and adjusts the css of that block to $SCREEN_WIDTH. It's been able to do this ever since I started using it in 2009. Now, I've lived under a rock since then, but are you really saying that your mobile browser doesn't do something like that?
I believe it's such browsers that the author was referring to.
Still, admittedly, using heuristics to patch the css shouldn't really be a browser's task, so your point holds.
If you are building a modern day site, there is just no reason not to make it mobile (phone/tablet) friendly. If you don't want to redesign an existing website, you can just make a separate site that redirects, but which is a less elegant solution.
