Honestly, the sites I find most usable on my iPad and iPhone are normal desktop sites that don't interfere with pinch-zoom and double-tap. That's how the device and browser were designed to work.
Sites that try to deliver an "optimized experience" are usually crippled at best. At worst they are completely broken. The really fancy ones like OnSwipe crash Mobile Safari after a couple of page views.
I think responsive design is different in that the basic idea is just to reduce the number of columns as the screen gets smaller (or increase them as it gets bigger). Likely the sites you are complaining about are serving up something completely different for mobile or perhaps some are going beyond what responsive design is and messing things up.
Not sure if this is the same thing you're talking about, but I've found a handful of WordPress blogs have some sort of mobile theme that tries to mimic the iOS "bounce" when scrolling all the way up or down. Ironically, most of the time it breaks MobileSafari on my iPad.
Comments
Honestly, the sites I find most usable on my iPad and iPhone are normal desktop sites that don't interfere with pinch-zoom and double-tap. That's how the device and browser were designed to work.
Sites that try to deliver an "optimized experience" are usually crippled at best. At worst they are completely broken. The really fancy ones like OnSwipe crash Mobile Safari after a couple of page views.
I think responsive design is different in that the basic idea is just to reduce the number of columns as the screen gets smaller (or increase them as it gets bigger). Likely the sites you are complaining about are serving up something completely different for mobile or perhaps some are going beyond what responsive design is and messing things up.
Not sure if this is the same thing you're talking about, but I've found a handful of WordPress blogs have some sort of mobile theme that tries to mimic the iOS "bounce" when scrolling all the way up or down. Ironically, most of the time it breaks MobileSafari on my iPad.
That is OnSwipe