Sharepoint 2013 and Responsive Web Development

"Depending on what channels you define, you may want several designs, and so several HTML files, where each file gets converted into a separate master page. Also, each HTML file (and so each master page) can reference its own CSS file. Before you design your site, device channels are one of the first things to consider." Sharepoint 2013 Design Guide

Never let it be said that there was ever any party, anywhere, to which Microsoft could not be late. It could be at eight PM on a Thursday next to a transit stop, and they would take the streetcar in snow. Invited to an auto show, they would purchase a BMW, cheering as they did so BMW's long association with not only jerks, but jerks lacking the confidence and funding for an Audi.

Microsoft has missed the invitation once more, and this time, with responsive web programming.

via @Stammy

This is what the web looks like. Planning a resolution to display at and then laying out careful HTML for each view is unfettered nonsense, like trying to make Windows Forms work on the internet, or relying on the Table Ta-
I'm just going to pour some rum in this nog before we continue because of course they did this on purpose. The M in Microsoft stands for Malice Aforethought.

People, the internet is not static. It's controllable, but the control isn't yours and never will be. The control belongs to the people with money, which, even if you are a market capitalized publicly-traded corporation, you still can't control the other companies with money, and they are going to make tiny glass panels in every size they think will make a dime. Planning for a specific device resolution is insane, because you have no idea what people are reading their e-mail on. You could plan for the models on the left, but your interns own the things on the right, and you have no budget to buy an intern a phone. This means there's no device resolution planning, unless your organization wishes to both sign an exclusive contract whereby Apple gets to spy in every one of your supposedly private company documents, and then pay for you - and your intern - to have an iPhone. Your organization has no money for that! They can't even get it together to buy printers.

Microsoft has the power to repair this type of boondoggle, because they have the money to churn out Sharepoint, and that means that if they had the willpower, they could almost certainly pre-populate Sharepoint with actually functional responsive web layouts. They simply don't want to do that, because it would mean admitting that they are no longer the most important or most relevant company on the block.
You can tell they're trying to do better with usability, and also that they would rather chew off their own tits than cooperate with Apple and Google. Sometimes I find condescending phrases like "This shouldn't take long" with no process timer on a job that runs for an indeterminate length of time, so I know they mean well.

One layout, perfect mobile, served from inside the house. They could almost certainly put the work in to crack "automatically responsive image down-sampling" or "web fonts" or "any actual web problem," and for the moment, this sort of nonsense is just embarrassing. It's straight admitting they think they have a hope in Hell to be cool or useful or the company they were when they had a visionary running them and Douglas Coupland writing positive books about their nightmarish corporate culture as though it were a good thing.

Of course, Sharepoint is popular with organizations such as the NSA, where Edward Snowden was a systems administrator. So let it never be said that good things cannot come from purposefully obfuscated and repulsive bureaucracy: if it weren't for Sharepoint, we may never have known that the NSA loves spying through MS products like Skype best of all.