Progressive Enhancement is essential

[last updated Nov 2024]

Thankfully, it seems the importance of Progressive Enhancement is resurfacing due to the “Internet of Things” and the importance of supporting older and lower-end devices (especially for developing countries where it may be the only option for many users).

Semantic markup is an important part of the Progressive Enhancement technique, so it also helps accessibility (and SEO if I dare mention that!)

Since I live in the web-dev world, I always try to post resources about the topic on social media. Here’s a solid list I’ve procured:

• Progressive enhancement brings everyone in (Jan 2025) by Jay Hoffmann
• Building an accessible theme picker with HTML, CSS and JavaScript by Sarah L. Fossheim (Dec 2022)
• Is Progressive Enhancement Dead Yet? by Heydon Pickering (Jan 2021)
• The beauty of progressive enhancement by Manuel Matuzović (Apr 2020)
• Hydration by Jeremy Keith (Feb. 2020)
• Building a resilient frontend using progressive enhancement by Gov.UK (Dec 019)
• FOUC and the Death of Progressive Enhancement by Kyle Simpson, JSCAMP (2019)
• What is Progressive Enhancement, and why it matters by FreeCodeCamp, (Nov. 2018)
• The power of progressive enhancement by Andy Bell (Aug. 2018)
• Progressive Enhancement and Accessibility by Dennis Lembree (me), PowerPoint from Accessibility Toronto Conference (Sep. 2017)
• What is Progressive Enhancement and Why Should You Care? by Tiffany Tse, Shopify (Feb. 2017)
• Progressively Enhancing CSS Layout: From Floats To Flexbox To Grid by Manuel Matuzović, Smashing Mag (July 2017)
• Using progressive enhancement (Updated Dec. 2019) and Why we use progressive enhancement to build GOV.UK by Gov.UK (Sep. 2016)
• Yes, progressive enhancement is a fucking moral argument by awfulwoman (Dec 2016)
• Building Social: A Case Study On Progressive Enhancement by Marko Dugonjić, Smashing Mag (Sep. 2016)
• Reimagining Single-Page Applications With Progressive Enhancement by Heydon Pickering (Dec. 2015)
• Interaction Is an Enhancement by Aaron Gustafson on A List Apart. (Dec. 2015)
• Beyond Responsive (Aug. 2015) YouTube of an 18F preso by Aaron Gustafson (and here’s the Beyond Responsive slideshare)
• Examining the Benefits of Progressive Enhancement (Feb. 2015) by Doug Avery of Viget Labs
• Why developers should embrace progressive enhancement (Mar. 2015) by Developer Drive
• Making websites that work well on Opera Mini (Jun. 2015) by Bruce Lawson
• Progressive Enhancement — the web’s strength (Jun. 2015) by Steve Lee
• Progressive Enhancement is not about JavaScript Availability (Feb. 2015) by Christian Heilmann
• Rocket packs on escalators — stop messing with progressive enhancement (YouTube of presentation) (May 2015) by Christian Heilmann
• Examining the Benefits of Progressive Enhancement (Feb. 2015) by Viget
• There Are No “Buts” in Progressive Enhancement; Slideshare and Vimeo by Aaron Gustafson (2015)
• Progressive Enhancement (a great use case) (Aug. 2014) by Thierry Koblentz of CSS Mojo
• Why we should support users with no JavaScript by punkchip (2011–14)
• Progressive enhancement is faster (Sep. 2013) by Jake Archibald
• How many people are missing out on JavaScript enhancement? by Gov.UK (Oct. 2013)
• CSS Grid Layout and Progressive Enhancement by MDN
• Progressive Enhancement defined on Wikipedia

Bonus!

• Everyone has JavaScript, right? by Stuart of kryogenix
• Awesome tweet:
  https://twitter.com/AndrewUX/status/202174625306783744
• Diagram — 4 layers of web UI:
  https://www.flickr.com/photos/odmag/8496072438/

PS: I’m also a long-time developer of progressive enhancement (when I was a dev, that is). A great example of mine in the accessible Twitter web app, Easy Chirp (now sunset).