Ethan demonstrates progressive enhancement at the pattern level using flexbox.
I’ve found that thinking about my design as existing in broad experience tiers – in layers – is one of the best ways of designing for the modern web.
- Basic functionality should work on any device that can access the web.
- Extras and flourishes are treated as progressive enhancements for modern devices.
- The UI can look different and even clunky on older devices and browsers, as long as it doesn’t break rule #1.
Practice Progressive Enhancement.
Build first and foremost with forgiving technologies, declarative technologies, and forward and backward compatible coding techniques.
All content should be readable without scripting.
If it’s worth building on the web, it’s worth building it robustly, and building it to last.
This is very nice HTML web component by Miriam, progressively enhancing an ordered list of audio elements.
If I was only able to give one bit of advice to any company: iterate quickly on a slow-moving platform.
Excellent advice from Harry (who first cast his pearls before the swine of LinkedIn but I talked him ‘round to posting this on his own site).
- Opt into web platform features incrementally
- Embrace progressive enhancement to build fast, reliable applications that adapt to your customers’ context
- Write code that leans into the browser, not away from it
I’m not against front-end frameworks, and, believe me, I’m not naive enough to believe that the only thing a front-end framework provides is soft navigations, but if you’re going to use one, I shouldn’t be able to smell it.
This is a great history of the idea of progressive enhancement:
It is an idea that has been lasting and enduring for two decades, and will continue.
How I switched to high-resolution maps on The Session without degrading performance.
Here’s Clearleft’s approach to browser support. You can use it too (it’s CC-licensed).
Here’s how I interpret the top-level guidance in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
A performance boost in Chrome.
If a browser feature can be used as a progressive enhancement, you don’t have to wait for all browsers to support it.