Is 'Mobile-First' a Layout Technique or Something Else
A candidate says "I design mobile-first" and describes it as a fluid layout that reflows at any viewport width.
Per this subject's precise definitions, is that an accurate description of mobile-first?
The correct answer is "No — mobile-first is a design/build order, not a layout technique."
This subject is explicit that mobile-first is not a layout technique at all — it's a design and build order: starting the design and implementation from the smallest, most constrained viewport, then progressively adding complexity as width increases, rather than starting from desktop and cramming it down. The fluid, reflowing behavior the candidate describes is responsive design — a separate concept that's commonly paired with mobile-first as the build order, but isn't the same thing.
The distractors conflate or invert the terms: "mobile-first and responsive are simply synonyms" is exactly the loose conflation this subject calls out as a fast way to signal you haven't shipped a real cross-device product; mobile-first doesn't mean a fixed set of discrete layouts either — that's adaptive design, a third, distinct term; and using relative units (rem, fr) describes responsive technique, not mobile-first process — a desktop-first project could still use relative units throughout.
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