Progressive Enhancement

Progressive enhancement is a way to make fast accessible websites by ensuring that people can use the site, even if the Javascript fails. This can also be seen as building the minimum viable product as quickly as possible, adding features only as necessary.

always to be the browser’s mentor, not its micromanager[5]

It goes like this:

  1. Make it work in raw HTML (see semantic HTML).
  2. Add CSS to style it how you want it to without sacrificing the usability.
  3. Add Javascript to enhance the site, not replace it's functionality.

Part of the appeal of PE is the strength of the end result. PE forces you to initially plan out your project as a functional system using only the most basic of Web technologies. This means that you know you’ll always have a strong foundation to fall back on as complexity is introduced to the project.

PE goes well with the principle of “Release early, release often.” By starting with a strong foundation, you are able to release projects that work and then concentrate on adding the bells and whistles at a more appropriate time.

PE projects are easier to maintain. With this focus on “first principles,” developers can concentrate on more complex sections of system interaction without worrying about the foundation.

PE is also good for your users. It gives them the security of knowing they can visit your website using any of the thousands of user-agents available to them and still interact with your content as that agent allows.[2]

What are we targeting

It should be noted that the global P75 for computer performance is not that fast[9]. In late 2022, the P75 target for a webpage to load in under 5 seconds was

This is not fast! 5 seconds for around 500KiB of data assumes an average speed of 100 KiB/s connection. In America, internet services barely offer speeds under 5 Mb/s, so it's easy to think that this is the standard around the world, but it is not.

Consider that many people still rock non-smartphones, little Nokia's with a built in Opera mini browser that performs very differently than any other modern browser (compare it to other browsers on caniuse).

References

  1. https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/select-the-right-tool/
  2. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/progressive-enhancement-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it/
  3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Progressive_Enhancement
  4. Building a resilient frontend using progressive enhancement
  5. The ideal viewport doesn’t exist
  6. https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-tech
  7. Translating designs to code
  8. Best practices for inclusive textual websites
  9. https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/
  10. Yes, progressive enhancement is a fucking moral argument
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Last modified: 202412270156