Using responsive design within Google Sites

Question

Is there a way to use responsive design principles with Google Sites. Has anyone tried that. Could you direct me to a sample site. I looked at this google help topic but then th

Answer 1

I think your negative impression is right. It doesn't implement the features you'd expect in responsive design.

The key to your question is that Google Sites don't use a viewport declaration (meta viewport in the head element). If you don't have that, then device browsers treat you as a legacy desktop-only website. They assume you'll break completely below ~830px, and set a page min-width accordingly. That doesn't sound much like responsive design to me.

Google Sites don't let you write your own CSS or HTML HEAD, so you can't implement a more responsive design yourself.

To be fair, you can choose to not set a fixed page width. Also navigations buttons will reflow on relatively narrow windows, if you're using the "horizontal navigation" feature. The latter isn't great design but at least it's degrading gracefully.

There is an option "Automatically adjust site to mobile phones" under Manage site -> General. However many people suggest it's better not to use it :). I tried enabling it on an old site, previewing the page, and selecting "preview in mobile". At least on Firefox on my original netbook (800px width), it was not responsive. It didn't expand to use the 800px screen properly.

As an aside, the line-wrapping (or absence of it) is a pre-existing issue with my site. You could blame this on me for not testing it :). However it illustrates a limitation of the WYSIWYG editor in Google Sites. It doesn't show, check for, or filter out the formatting that causes this problem.