A Good Front-End Architecture

The problem with pre-defined device breakpoints is that you never know what size the next device will be and thus you may miss the next big thing. You are always working in the past instead of looking into the future.

A few years ago the ipad didn’t exist so the existing pre-defined breakpoints were useless and missed a great share of the market. Designers then added the ipad breakpoints to their system but a year later the ipad mini came out so they missed that one also.

Phones first got smaller and now they are getting bigger again. The iphone 4 was a 320px wide device but the 5 and 6 have changed again.

Chasing devices is futile in nearly all respects.

Following the method that Ralph outlined above you would have collected all those devices old and new by simply catering for the design and not the device. You won’t miss anything and nothing will break because you have created a page that goes from large to small with a few well chosen design-breakpoints.

Of course some designs are awkward to code like this where the designer has essentially created a series of fixed width sites but that is a methodology that is bound to fail at some point.