A great article explaining the problems and presenting solutions is http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dao/ A Dao of Web Design. It is still extremely relevant.

"The web’s greatest strength, I believe, is often seen as a limitation, as a defect. It is the nature of the web to be flexible, and it should be our role as designers and developers to embrace this flexibility and produce pages which, by being flexible, are accessible to all. 

The journey begins by letting go of control, and becoming flexible." Ask yourself “What’s the minimum amount of content and navigation that we need to make our design useful? ” Start with the minimum, and add in more as you gain more space from larger screens and resolutions.

We cannot create custom experiences for each device. There is no future in that amount of work.

We need to overcome the restraints of web design. Embrace the flexibility of the web.

Three ingredients:

1. A flexible, grid-based layout,

2. Flexible images and media, and