Progressive enhancement is still important – JakeArchibald.com

July 4, 2013

javascript / progressive-enhancement

Christian Heilmann re-purposes a Mitch Hedberg observation to relate to progressive enhancement. Basically, when an elevator fails, it’s useless. When an escalator fails, it becomes stairs. We should be building escalators, not elevators.

Given the diversity of user agents, your JS failing isn’t an edge case. Sometimes it’ll be the browser’s fault, sometimes yours. For example, a few months ago the JavaScript on the Download Chrome page failed. Y’know what happened when you clicked the “Download Chrome” button? Nothing. A dash of progressive enhancement would have allowed people to continue downloading Chrome while the problem was fixed.