Bookmark: "Progressive Enhancement, the New Hotness™"

Sebastian Greger

Bookmarked:

Progressive Enhancement, the New Hotness™ gomakethings.com

It’s 2022, and 36.8% of respondents (not a representative survey, but assuming the demographic of Sara Soueidan’s Twitter followers to be dominantly web developers: even more shocking) don’t know what Progressive Enhancement is.

This short intro by Chris Ferdinandi, cheekily titled as if it were something really new and cutting-edge, not only clears up with some myths but gives a hands-on intro on how to build good websites by progressively enhancing, rather than limiting, user experience with JavaScript. It’s a really good primer to use in the apparently needed continued education for more inclusive and robust practice in creating digital artifacts.

This goes really well with yesterday’s bookmark, providing some hard facts on just how common it is that users do not receive JavaScript assets assumed by the developer:

How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement? gds.blog.gov.uk
Bookmark: “How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement?”
This is a 9 years old article. Yet, while the quantitative numbers may have shifted in one direction or the other, the qualitative statements stand unchanged: it cannot – and must not – be assumed that all JavaScript code is executed for every visitor of a website. […]

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing toge­ther social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

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