Graceful Degradation or Progressive Enhancement?



Yesterday i was reading the “Progressive Enhancement demystified” on the .Net site. It was one of those articles that was bookmarked to read later. The article was about the difference between Graceful Degradation and Progressive Enhancement. Since i started looking at HTML5 about 2 years ago i heard these words often without really understanding them.

Graceful Degradation VS Progressive Enhancement

Gracful Degradation: -> think browser
Takes care of the presentation in this proces the site or app get build for the most advanced and fancy browsers. In this paradigm older browser get little attention. Only the big errors get fixed and only for a few previous version. In other words it gets to the other buzz word “Fallback”. You make sure that for the functionality you use other minor browse can use a alternative or a message of the short coming of there browser. Can’t use canvas then use flash for example.

Progressive Enhancement: -> think content
It is all about the content. Start thinking from the content. And make sure everybody can see it wherever you are and on every device. Here the paradigm uses a different approche. Here you start from the content. Make a site working for everybody en then detect browser functionality and upgrade the. Here the author Aaron Gustafson used a great M&M analogy for P.E. Where the peanut is the content and structure in HTML, the chocolate is the style with CSS and at tast the finishing glaze being Javascript. As you can see this involves the Unobtrusive designe approche.

This also divide the web developers in two groups, i was one of the first group becoming one of the second group.With Gracefully Degradation people think we should develop for the newest browsers with te newest standards and that people should upgrade there browser.
With Progressive Enhancement people think it is better to build for the old and less advanced browsers and then build it up for the new fancy browsers.

My Implementation

After being dept in the Crockford universe of Javascript and using “the Good Parts” (more then 6 hours of video presentations). I used my new skill’s for a new project, as a result i have a nice site where everything is separated. The big drawback is that it needs Javascript to make the navigation work. You can see all the content that is not the problem but when you click a link it does nothing. So i have a nice readable site for every browser and device, but no navigation.

So reading about Progressive enhancement made me think.
I can include PE in my design flow.Write content
Make structure with HTML
Make navigation for site with HTML
Add Style with CSS
Test for browser functionality with Javascript
Add Javascript
Replace HTML functionality with Javascript

In a way u make 3 sites on top of each other:a static textual version
a static styled version
a dynamic text and styled version

I think this will even simplify the design flow and improves the test proces because you can put the first textual version online right away.

What do you think about Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation.
Witch side are you on.





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