Simon Willison’s Weblog

How do you make an existing web application more mobile-friendly without rebuilding it?

5th September 2012

My answer to How do you make an existing web application more mobile-friendly without rebuilding it? on Quora

Learn about responsive web design. Provided your site is built reasonably well using CSS for layout there is a TON of stuff you can do with CSS media queries to make your site work better on small screen devices. For example, using media queries to detect small screen (mobile) devices you can...

- switch from two columns to a single column layout
- hide irrelevant content entirely
- use shorter labels on your site navigation
- serve up larger, more mobile friendly click regions
- switch to a font family and size that’s easier to read on mobile

Here’s the original article that coined the term: http://www.alistapart.com/articl...—there are plenty of excellent resources, tutorials and books around these days too if you want to learn more.