Responsive Websites - Limitations

Responsive website design is a new technique that takes advantage of advanced features of CSS3 - notably media query. This attribute allows web developers to display different content for different devices depending on the requirement of that device. Although they look like panacea, responsive websites do have certain limitations.

Here are some limitations that need to be considered if you want to develop a responsive website for your company:

It is tedious to develop complex websites with the responsive web technology. They work well for uncomplicated websites. If your company sells products online, you need to think carefully.

Responsive web design relies heavily on CSS media queries to display content for a device as and when needed. However, not all mobile devices are compatible with CSS media queries.

As of date (Feb 2013), W3C has not specified any set of standards for handling images. Web designers use their own scripts to handle this issue, and the results can vary from device to device. Secondly, responsive websites download the complete image first before resizing it, resulting in slow speed. 

Responsive designs tend to be straightforward in order to take advantage of a set of patterns of moving items. Thus, correct representation of tabular data can be a challenge.

All said and done, there still are people who use old versions of Internet Explorer (6 or even less). They simply cannot view responsive websites correctly.

Mobile users usually have less speed compared to desktop users. This is at least true of a country like India, where mobile Internet speed is nothing to write home about. Responsive design does not remove any unnecessary JavaScript or extra HTML code, This makes a responsive website slower.