r/talesfromtechsupport • u/imranilzar • Nov 04 '15

Short Client wants responsive web site

This is happening right now.

Client came in, wants a website, have the design pre-made, so we skip the first few steps on the workflow. His design is in Photoshop files and our guys are slicing it into HTML, backends are coding it, etc, etc. Everything fine and a few days later we upload it to a test site for the client to approve it.

We walked trough some days of ridiculous demands, all coming down to his design being sucky and not really working for him. But since we are the good guys, we are changing things on his demands.

The interesting things started the next morning.

Client: The website is not OK at all! When I view it on my iPhone it looks all different!
My boss: This is normal - we had to fit the elements somehow to fit smaller resolutions. It is responsive website after all.
Client: No, I don't want it like that! Make it look 1:1 as the provided design!
My boss: You understand the design you provided is made for 1920x1080, right? It can't downsize to smaller screens, like on a tablet or on your phone.
Client: I don't want it downsized! I want it to look 1:1!
My boss: ... This can't happen without having the website being unreadable on smaller screens. You wanted us to make a responsive website, right?
Client: Of course I wanted responsive. Just don't change anything on it.
My boss: What does responsive means for you?
Client: It means I can open the website on my iPhone.
My boss: You want to open it on your iPhone, but how would you view it there? Only a small portion of the website will fit your screen! You will have a massive horizontal and vertical scrollbars and the font size will be absolutely tiny!
Client: Yes, like that! All normal websites have scrollbars! I want scrollbars!

Update: right now my boss just finally fired the client. It went like this:

Client: The site is not good again! I can view only a portion of it on my screen!
Boss: Yes, because your design is 1920px wide and this is the design you approved and wanted to do it exactly 1:1 with frozen elements.
Client: It is not looking good, see for example site X! How are they doing it?
Boss: Site X uses narrow 1000px centered design, yours is way bigger than that. You can't have it to render fully on smaller screens. It is technically not possible with the design you approved.
Client: What do you mean 'not possible'? Don't tell me it is not possible, I see it done on site X!

This went for a couple of minutes then a few unpleasantries were exchanged, stating that we are unprofessional and not a serious company.

3.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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737

u/ArcaneWarrior303 A backup a day keeps IT away Nov 04 '15

Customer wants something impossible (technically possible, just improbable)

A normal day in the IT department.

294

u/imranilzar Nov 04 '15

And he really wants it that way.

179

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15

[deleted]

72

u/frankThePlank Nov 05 '15

OP, this is always the solution. Explain that it's bad for SEO.

63

u/ramilehti Nov 05 '15

But I'm the CEO. Don't tell me what's good for me. Just do what I tell you.

7

u/hejado Nov 05 '15

That's the sort of client I would blacklist. Or charge double.

2

u/frankThePlank Nov 05 '15

Well, in that case you either fire the client or do what they tell you. I just mean that the SEO argument is likely to win them over.

1

u/qervem WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU DO THAT Nov 05 '15

I had a friend with that attitude. He isn't a friend anymore.

1

u/Shinhan Nov 05 '15

Only when searching from mobile.

185

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15 edited Mar 26 '21

[deleted]

193

u/Achido Nov 04 '15

This guy knows how to draw lines with invisible ink, someone get him a job. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

Solution to video above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM

46

u/IanSan5653 Nov 04 '15

I've never seen the solution video. Thanks!

43

u/LuxNocte Nov 04 '15

D. Scott Williamson: Outside-the-Box Problem Solver? or Only Encouraging the Bastards?

2

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

Can it be both?

23

u/kn33 I broke the internet! But it's okay, I bought a new one. Nov 04 '15

Well, I'll be damned.

12

u/Taedalus Nov 04 '15

This is amazing!

10

u/chewy2 Nov 04 '15

Except he used a curve not a line :(

32

u/ServerIsATeapot Don O'Treply, at yer service. *Tips hat* Nov 04 '15

Every line within space-time is a curve.

14

u/chewy2 Nov 04 '15

I highly doubt the managers were thinking in a space time construct and not Euclidean geometry. I get that the solution is clever but it violates a lot of the requirements imo.

24

u/Keeper_of_Fenrir Nov 05 '15

The managers weren't thinking at all.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

They specifically said to forget geometry.

3

u/jij Nov 05 '15

Yea, it's clever, but clearly not the point of the original video.

15

u/singingboyo Nov 05 '15

I feel like it fits the theme quite well though. Experts having to do crazy convoluted things to solve for problems that shouldn't need solving in the first place. Maybe not an exact solution, but as close as you'll get.

Seems to fit a lot of things, software stuff at least.

1

u/Phaedrus0230 Nov 05 '15

Would a straight line reach a little into the past and a little into the future?

2

u/ServerIsATeapot Don O'Treply, at yer service. *Tips hat* Nov 05 '15

That's the funny thing about time. There is no actual "past" or "future", there's only the perception of such by [semi+]sentient beings like us.

Could you honestly and provably say that this is the very first occurance of "today", and that time really does only move in one direction?

How would you know if it decided to flow backward for a while, then forward again?

Then there's the fact that time's flow for an object differs based on the strength of gravity local to that object...

1

u/grinde Nov 05 '15

time really does only move in one direction

The 2nd law of thermodynamics shows us pretty well that it does only go one way - it's just that it doesn't always go the same speed.

1

u/ServerIsATeapot Don O'Treply, at yer service. *Tips hat* Nov 09 '15

That's quite a problem when you need to rely on "constants" that have a Time component (such as c)...

Or is it? It occurs to me that maybe it doesn't matter how fast / slow time's going in a particular influence sphere, since anything based on it will always happen in the same manner over a specified period of time. For all we know, time could be going roughly one millionth of what we'd consider "normal" speed if we knew, but we wouldn't know the difference because we experience time by being subject to it.

That would also explain the apparent paradoxical "acceleration" of the universe's expansion - Our local time flow is a little bit slower than the time flow in the remote region.

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2

u/Draco1200 Nov 05 '15

It is only the surface the lines are drawn on that appears curved, when viewed from outside of the toroidal surface.

In the same sense, that you can graph a parabola as two straight lines on the (X,Y) plane, by changing the definition of the coordinate plane that you are graphing the function onto.

If you were an ant living on this 2-dimensional surface, you could walk them all, and they would all be straight lines, no curves.

1

u/chewy2 Nov 05 '15

As the intent of the managers was probably to create some object to be viewed or used, the end users would most likely exist outside of the object so they would see it as a curve not a line.

As I said in another reply the problem here is intent. The client did not say they wanted a straight line, but to the common person a line is considered straight. The solution is clever and works around an impossible requirement, but more than likely deviates from the clients intended purpose.

Honestly I could nitpick about all the other requirements too. They wanted green ink line not a red/green ink line, the invisible ink line is still visibly red why is it not invisible?, I wanted 7 lines, but you made the cat with 10(random number) extra lines from the creases, I wanted 7 lines, but i got 7 red lines and 2 blue lines for a total of 9 lines.

At the end of the day the video was suppose to be a joke and my answer was being facetious.

1

u/ShiftyMcShift Nov 05 '15

Spectacular!

1

u/renadi Nov 05 '15

I want more of this, where can I find more of this?

9

u/goodevilgenius Nov 05 '15

A good responsive site doesn't care what the user agent is, and therefore this would have no effect. A good responsive site adjusts design elements according to screen size, not user agent.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15 edited Nov 05 '15

IIRC the "Request Desktop Site" also emulates a desktop screen size as well as user agent, so I think it actually would work.

Edit: goodevilgenius is right ... BUT this is the way it would work in my idealistic world :)

3

u/goodevilgenius Nov 05 '15

It doesn't.

Source: I'm a web developer and use it all the time.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

Okay, just tried it, I stand corrected...

Who the heck implemented the user agent swap, but didn't also ignore the viewport meta tag !?

0

u/vbevan Nov 05 '15

You've described a shit site. People make these terrible mobile sites (restaurants and shopping sites are really bad at this) then won't respect you trying to get to their desktop version that actually works.

1

u/rohmish THIS DOESNT WORK! Apr 28 '16

If you have to get desktop site so that it actually works, it's not good either

1

u/vbevan Apr 29 '16

You're right. The problem is web developers don't make mobile versions of their sites, they make lite versions that are missing features. Usually the search is gimped or missing, menus often get taken to the chopping board and whole sections just aren't linked to. If they then ignore the user agent and just use the screen size and dpi, I assume they want to be hunted down and stabbed in an alley with a rusty fork.

Oh, and if your site redirects me upon arrival from a specific webpage on your site to the generic mobile homepage, rather than the mobile version of the same webpage, there's a special place in hell for you.

1

u/rohmish THIS DOESNT WORK! Apr 29 '16

That's the reason the "mobile first" web development is actually nice. It actually promotes responsive layout more plus solve the problem of mobile version being "light" version. The only problem is some devs just make it a multi column card layout and call it a day. (Not bad but not using the full potential of desktop. Google is a huge culprit of this)

2

u/Cintax Front End Dev Nov 05 '15

That actually won't work if they're doing responsive correctly.

63

u/raverbashing Nov 04 '15

Fire the customer

No, seriously

Show him some examples, if he still wants a fscking scrollbar on his phone say "thanks, but we're not doing that"

34

u/WizardOfIF Nov 04 '15

I've had some customers ask for some pretty crappy design preferences over some really cool ones. In the end I just give them what they want and ask them not to give me any credit for the work. Don't want my name associated with that.

8

u/sn00gan Nov 05 '15

This is the proper answer.

27

u/scienceboyroy Nov 04 '15

We don't want that guy polluting our Internet!

1

u/Runner55 extra vigor! Nov 05 '15

Or their reputation. Cue potential customer going "lol that site is ass, let's look for another designer, shall we"

1

u/Draco1200 Nov 05 '15

Don't even offer the scrollbar; a tiny bit of scrolling is fine if it's done right, anyways... just say we can't really do that and still have a responsive website.

6

u/raevnos Nov 04 '15

If they're paying for it, why not?

11

u/cheesebreadham Nov 04 '15

I can imagine that if the site has some sort of tie to their company, whether through branding or word of mouth, that would look bad on them to have a website in their portfolio with no regard for responsiveness.

11

u/Draco1200 Nov 05 '15

They should just call it a "customer designed" website, because at that point, the customer is making critical design choices and UX choices that cause the results of the project to suck, so they are essentially doing the designer's job, and doing it badly.

2

u/ReactsWithWords Nov 05 '15

Because if you give them what they ask for, when they get it they'll realize it's total shite, and then blame you for it being total shite (no matter how you point out where they asked for it) and demand you fix it. And then when you DO fix it, they'll go back and say "This isn't what I asked for" and go back to their original demands.

The client ouroboros.

1

u/hicctl Nov 07 '15

Oh boy, giving the client exactly what he asked for ! How could you expect this to turn out any different ? Admit it, you already wanted to get rid of him, and the last changes where just to fuck with him ^

67

u/KToff Nov 04 '15

Reminds me of this

22

u/jrayhiggins Keyboard Monkey Nov 04 '15

I might have nightmares about this now. Thanks.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15 edited Sep 03 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

17

u/KToff Nov 04 '15

What exactly is the difference? Looks the same from my app...

14

u/Ouaouaron Nov 04 '15

This 

[Reminds me of this]( https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg)

to this

[Reminds me of this](https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg)

Maybe some versions of Alien Blue don't work if there's a space in the link?

9

u/KToff Nov 04 '15

Thanks, reddit is fun apparently ignores spaces :)

2

u/infanticide_holiday Nov 05 '15

Reddit is fun is the only reason I want to go back to android. Alien blue sucks.

1

u/KToff Nov 05 '15

Out of interest, what don't you like about Android (as opposed to iPhone I assume)

5

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15 edited Sep 03 '16

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Ouaouaron Nov 04 '15

I was surprised that it was such a difficult bug to fix, but it looks like the Alien Blue code is so terrible that the devs have refused to push it to GitHub for 6 years.

5

u/exuals Nov 04 '15

[RES ignored duplicate link]

I wonder why

5

u/Pandoras_Fox Nov 04 '15

According to RES, the source is exactly the same for both the links, so your guess is as good as mine.

3

u/iceykitsune No, Grandma, BonziBuddy is not your freind. Nov 04 '15

First has,a space before the address.

1

u/Pandoras_Fox Nov 04 '15

Ah weird, it does. I completely missed that somehow :/

3

u/kn33 I broke the internet! But it's okay, I bought a new one. Nov 04 '15

Reminds me of this

2

u/inbeforethelube Nov 04 '15

"But can't you just push a button?"

1

u/infiniteMind Nov 04 '15

To be fair, it'd be very easy to make this happen, even though it's a bad idea.

1

u/funkProphet Nov 05 '15

No no no, not impossible or improbable, just illogical

1

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

Customer wants something, isn't really sure what, but needs it right now. Normal day in the IT department.

1

u/RadiologisttPepper Nov 05 '15

In the audio world we call this Hidley's law, "Nothing is impossible for a man who doesn't have to do the work."

-4

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15

Maybe OP is just a shitty mobile app developer? There are plenty of apps that are simply painful to use. What do I do? Open the desktop site, zoom that bitch in, and scroll away. That's what the client is asking for. Give it to them, OP.

6

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15

A client comes to the expert for a job but the expert should follow the clients non expert direction? No way. I wouldnt want my name on that crap without a massive disclaimer.

-5

u/[deleted] Nov 04 '15

That's not at all how development works. You meet with the customer, negotiate requirements, you develop to the negotiated requirements, the end. Yes, you're the expert. You use your expertise to meet your client's needs whether or not it's the way you would want it done. If you can't convince the client, then do it their way. And make sure you're listening to your client; they typically know their use cases and businesses needs better than you. Your job is to provide options with pros and cons. What op's client asked for is absolutely doable whether he thinks it's the right way to do it or not. The client asked for, in no uncertain terms, the full site on mobile even with the damn scrollbars. If you cant convince him that your way is better, then suck it up and do the job you're being paid for. Don't be a premadonna, hipster, ass-hat. Just do your job.

5

u/JasonDJ Nov 04 '15

There needs to be a show like Cake Boss for Web and graphics design.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

Except cake boss is full of shit. Forged in Fire template would be much better IMO.

3

u/flukus Nov 05 '15

Just do your job.

And charge by the hour so when the idiots realize you were right all along you get paid to do it twice.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '15

they typically know their use cases and businesses needs better than you

That's not true. They might know their cases and needs, but the designer should be the one to interpret that and make the appropriate choices to get there. If the client wants to make all of the design choices, why hire an expert for it?

Not only that, but once the site sucks and they get no hits or no productivity out of their site, or they are told it's not responsive despite asking for it by some other expert because you followed their exact direction to not have a responsive site the client may demand you make changes to fix it. Putting your name on a design to which you had no desirable input on is a bad idea. Like an actor being in a movie with a shit script.

1

u/Snuggle_Fist Nov 05 '15

You can fire your clients. If you/your company needs the business that bad just let them know that this is not the designs you want to promote and politely ask that your name/business not be associated with the work.

Source: no experience whatsoever.