Progressive Enhancement is a fundamental web development strategy that prioritizes accessibility and resilience by starting with a basic, universally accessible foundation and progressively enhancing the user experience for users with more capable devices and browsers.
Progressive Enhancement is a design and development approach that ensures web content is accessible to a broad range of users, including those with older browsers or less capable devices. It begins with a core experience that is accessible to all and then progressively adds more advanced features and styling for users with modern browsers and devices. At its core, Progressive Enhancement is about building the web from the ground up, with a focus on accessibility and inclusivity.
The Principles of Progressive Enhancement
Progressive Enhancement is guided by several core principles:
Accessibility First: The core experience is designed to be fully accessible to all users, regardless of their device or browser.
Broad Compatibility: The core experience should work on a wide range of devices and browsers, including older or less capable ones.
Layered Functionality: Additional features and enhancements are added in layers, starting with the most basic functionality and progressively building upon it.
Graceful Degradation: If a user’s device or browser doesn’t support a particular enhancement, the experience should gracefully degrade, ensuring the core functionality remains intact.
The Progression of Enhancement
Progressive Enhancement typically involves the following stages of progression:
HTML: The foundation of any web page is semantic HTML markup. This basic structure ensures that content is accessible and meaningful, even to users with text-based or screen reader browsers.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to add styling to the HTML content. This step enhances the visual presentation and layout of the page.
JavaScript: JavaScript is used to add interactivity and functionality to the page. This can include dynamic content loading, form validation, and more advanced user interactions.
Feature Detection: Modern web development often involves feature detection, where JavaScript checks the capabilities of a user’s browser and selectively loads additional enhancements if supported.
Responsive Design: Responsive design techniques ensure that web layouts adapt to different screen sizes and orientations, improving the user experience on various devices.
Performance Optimization: Progressive Enhancement also includes optimization strategies, such as image lazy loading and minification, to improve the performance of the web page.
Benefits of Progressive Enhancement
Progressive Enhancement offers numerous benefits to both developers and users:
Accessibility: It ensures that web content is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities or using older technology.
Resilience: Progressive Enhancement makes web applications more resilient to changes in technology, ensuring they continue to function as intended.
Broad Compatibility: Websites built with Progressive Enhancement are compatible with a wide range of devices and browsers, expanding the potential audience.
Performance: By prioritizing essential functionality and content, Progressive Enhancement helps optimize the performance of web pages.
SEO-Friendly: Search engines can easily crawl and index content presented using semantic HTML, improving SEO rankings.
Best Practices for Progressive Enhancement
To effectively implement Progressive Enhancement, consider the following best practices:
Start with Semantic HTML: Use HTML elements that convey the correct meaning of content, such as headings, lists, and form elements.
Test on Diverse Devices: Test the core experience on a variety of devices, including older browsers, mobile devices, and screen readers.
Use Modern Techniques Sparingly: While it’s essential to embrace modern web techniques, ensure they are used as enhancements and don’t compromise the core experience.
Feature Detection: Use feature detection techniques to determine whether certain enhancements should be applied based on the user’s browser capabilities.
Prioritize Performance: Optimize assets like images and scripts to improve page load times, benefiting all users.
Mobile-First and Responsive Design: Embrace a mobile-first approach and employ responsive design principles to ensure a seamless experience on smaller screens.
The Role of Progressive Enhancement in Modern Web Development
In the era of Single Page Applications (SPAs) and client-side rendering, Progressive Enhancement remains relevant and important. While SPAs can deliver highly interactive experiences, they often rely heavily on JavaScript and may not be suitable for all users. Progressive Enhancement can be applied to SPAs by ensuring that essential content and functionality are available through server-side rendering and that JavaScript is used to enhance the experience for modern browsers.
Challenges and Considerations
Progressive Enhancement is not without its challenges:
Development Time: Building enhancements in layers may require more development time than focusing on a single, feature-rich experience.
Complexity: Managing multiple versions of a web application to accommodate various devices and browsers can be complex.
Balancing Act: Striking the right balance between accessibility and advanced functionality requires careful consideration.
User Testing: Rigorous testing is essential to ensure that the progression of enhancements works seamlessly for all users.
The Future of Progressive Enhancement
As technology continues to evolve, Progressive Enhancement will adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Some trends and developments include:
Enhancements for Emerging Technologies: Progressive Enhancement will incorporate enhancements tailored for emerging technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
Improved Feature Detection: More sophisticated feature detection techniques will be developed to fine-tune enhancements based on specific device capabilities.
Web Accessibility Standards: Ongoing advancements in web accessibility standards will influence Progressive Enhancement practices.
Progressive Enhancement is a resilient and inclusive approach to web development that prioritizes accessibility and compatibility. By starting with a core experience and progressively adding enhancements, web developers can create web applications that cater to a diverse range of users and devices. In an ever-evolving digital landscape, Progressive Enhancement remains a key strategy for building robust and user-friendly web experiences that stand the test of time.
Key highlights of Progressive Enhancement and its principles:
Accessibility Focus: Progressive Enhancement prioritizes accessibility by ensuring that the core experience is fully accessible to all users, regardless of their device or browser.
Broad Compatibility: The approach aims for broad compatibility, making the core experience work on a wide range of devices and browsers, including older or less capable ones.
Layered Functionality: Additional features are added in layers, starting with basic functionality and progressively building upon it, ensuring graceful degradation for unsupported features.
Development Stages: It typically involves stages of progression from semantic HTML markup to CSS styling, JavaScript interactivity, feature detection, responsive design, and performance optimization.
Benefits: Progressive Enhancement offers benefits such as improved accessibility, resilience to technological changes, broad compatibility, enhanced performance, and better SEO rankings.
Best Practices: Best practices include starting with semantic HTML, testing on diverse devices, using modern techniques sparingly, prioritizing performance, and embracing mobile-first and responsive design.
Role in Modern Web Development: In the era of SPAs and client-side rendering, Progressive Enhancement remains relevant by ensuring essential content and functionality are available through server-side rendering, accommodating all users.
Challenges: Challenges include increased development time, complexity in managing multiple versions, balancing accessibility with advanced functionality, and the need for rigorous user testing.
Future Trends: Future trends may include enhancements for emerging technologies like AR and VR, improved feature detection techniques, and ongoing advancements in web accessibility standards.
Conclusion: Progressive Enhancement is a resilient and inclusive approach to web development that creates robust and user-friendly web experiences by starting with a core accessible experience and progressively adding enhancements. It remains a key strategy for building web applications that cater to diverse users and devices in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
AIOps is the application of artificial intelligence to IT operations. It has become particularly useful for modern IT management in hybridized, distributed, and dynamic environments. AIOps has become a key operational component of modern digital-based organizations, built around software and algorithms.
Agile started as a lightweight development method compared to heavyweight software development, which is the core paradigm of the previous decades of software development. By 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born as a set of principles that defined the new paradigm for software development as a continuous iteration. This would also influence the way of doing business.
Agile Program Management is a means of managing, planning, and coordinating interrelated work in such a way that value delivery is emphasized for all key stakeholders. Agile Program Management (AgilePgM) is a disciplined yet flexible agile approach to managing transformational change within an organization.
Agile project management (APM) is a strategy that breaks large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. In the APM methodology, each project is completed in small sections – often referred to as iterations. Each iteration is completed according to its project life cycle, beginning with the initial design and progressing to testing and then quality assurance.
Agile Modeling (AM) is a methodology for modeling and documenting software-based systems. Agile Modeling is critical to the rapid and continuous delivery of software. It is a collection of values, principles, and practices that guide effective, lightweight software modeling.
Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA) is certification in the form of guidance and training for business analysts seeking to work in agile environments. To support this shift, AgileBA also helps the business analyst relate Agile projects to a wider organizational mission or strategy. To ensure that analysts have the necessary skills and expertise, AgileBA certification was developed.
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles.
The andon system alerts managerial, maintenance, or other staff of a production process problem. The alert itself can be activated manually with a button or pull cord, but it can also be activated automatically by production equipment. Most Andon boards utilize three colored lights similar to a traffic signal: green (no errors), yellow or amber (problem identified, or quality check needed), and red (production stopped due to unidentified issue).
Bimodal Portfolio Management (BimodalPfM) helps an organization manage both agile and traditional portfolios concurrently. Bimodal Portfolio Management – sometimes referred to as bimodal development – was coined by research and advisory company Gartner. The firm argued that many agile organizations still needed to run some aspects of their operations using traditional delivery models.
Business innovation is about creating new opportunities for an organization to reinvent its core offerings, revenue streams, and enhance the value proposition for existing or new customers, thus renewing its whole business model. Business innovation springs by understanding the structure of the market, thus adapting or anticipating those changes.
Business modelinnovation is about increasing the success of an organization with existing products and technologies by crafting a compelling value proposition able to propel a new business model to scale up customers and create a lasting competitive advantage. And it all starts by mastering the key customers.
A consumer brand company like Procter & Gamble (P&G) defines “Constructive Disruption” as: a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. According to P&G, it moves around four pillars: lean innovation, brand building, supply chain, and digitalization & data analytics.
That is a process that requires a continuous feedback loop to develop a valuable product and build a viable business model. Continuous innovation is a mindset where products and services are designed and delivered to tune them around the customers’ problem and not the technical solution of its founders.
A design sprint is a proven five-day process where critical business questions are answered through speedy design and prototyping, focusing on the end-user. A design sprint starts with a weekly challenge that should finish with a prototype, test at the end, and therefore a lesson learned to be iterated.
Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, defined design thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Therefore, desirability, feasibility, and viability are balanced to solve critical problems.
DevOps refers to a series of practices performed to perform automated software development processes. It is a conjugation of the term “development” and “operations” to emphasize how functions integrate across IT teams. DevOps strategies promote seamless building, testing, and deployment of products. It aims to bridge a gap between development and operations teams to streamline the development altogether.
Product discovery is a critical part of agile methodologies, as its aim is to ensure that products customers love are built. Product discovery involves learning through a raft of methods, including design thinking, lean start-up, and A/B testing to name a few. Dual Track Agile is an agile methodology containing two separate tracks: the “discovery” track and the “delivery” track.
eXtreme Programming was developed in the late 1990s by Ken Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham. During this time, the trio was working on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) to help manage the company payroll system. eXtreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology. It is designed to improve software quality and the ability of software to adapt to changing customer needs.
Feature-Driven Development is a pragmatic software process that is client and architecture-centric. Feature-Driven Development (FDD) is an agile software development model that organizes workflow according to which features need to be developed next.
A Gemba Walk is a fundamental component of lean management. It describes the personal observation of work to learn more about it. Gemba is a Japanese word that loosely translates as “the real place”, or in business, “the place where value is created”. The Gemba Walk as a concept was created by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System of lean manufacturing. Ohno wanted to encourage management executives to leave their offices and see where the real work happened. This, he hoped, would build relationships between employees with vastly different skillsets and build trust.
GIST Planning is a relatively easy and lightweight agile approach to product planning that favors autonomous working. GIST Planning is a lean and agile methodology that was created by former Google product manager Itamar Gilad. GIST Planning seeks to address this situation by creating lightweight plans that are responsive and adaptable to change. GIST Planning also improves team velocity, autonomy, and alignment by reducing the pervasive influence of management. It consists of four blocks: goals, ideas, step-projects, and tasks.
The ICE Scoring Model is an agile methodology that prioritizes features using data according to three components: impact, confidence, and ease of implementation. The ICE Scoring Model was initially created by author and growth expert Sean Ellis to help companies expand. Today, the model is broadly used to prioritize projects, features, initiatives, and rollouts. It is ideally suited for early-stage product development where there is a continuous flow of ideas and momentum must be maintained.
An innovation funnel is a tool or process ensuring only the best ideas are executed. In a metaphorical sense, the funnel screens innovative ideas for viability so that only the best products, processes, or business models are launched to the market. An innovation funnel provides a framework for the screening and testing of innovative ideas for viability.
According to how well defined is the problem and how well defined the domain, we have four main types of innovations: basic research (problem and domain or not well defined); breakthrough innovation (domain is not well defined, the problem is well defined); sustaining innovation (both problem and domain are well defined); and disruptive innovation (domain is well defined, the problem is not well defined).
The innovation loop is a methodology/framework derived from the Bell Labs, which produced innovation at scale throughout the 20th century. They learned how to leverage a hybrid innovation management model based on science, invention, engineering, and manufacturing at scale. By leveraging individual genius, creativity, and small/large groups.
The Agile methodology has been primarily thought of for software development (and other business disciplines have also adopted it). Lean thinking is a process improvement technique where teams prioritize the value streams to improve it continuously. Both methodologies look at the customer as the key driver to improvement and waste reduction. Both methodologies look at improvement as something continuous.
A startup company is a high-tech business that tries to build a scalable business model in tech-driven industries. A startup company usually follows a lean methodology, where continuous innovation, driven by built-in viral loops is the rule. Thus, driving growth and building network effects as a consequence of this strategy.
As pointed out by Eric Ries, a minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort through a cycle of build, measure, learn; that is the foundation of the lean startup methodology.
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework first developed by Toyota in the late 1940s. The Kanban framework is a means of visualizing work as it moves through identifying potential bottlenecks. It does that through a process called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing to optimize engineering processes, speed up manufacturing products, and improve the go-to-market strategy.
Jidoka was first used in 1896 by Sakichi Toyoda, who invented a textile loom that would stop automatically when it encountered a defective thread. Jidoka is a Japanese term used in lean manufacturing. The term describes a scenario where machines cease operating without human intervention when a problem or defect is discovered.
The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle was first proposed by American physicist and engineer Walter A. Shewhart in the 1920s. The PDCA cycle is a continuous process and product improvement method and an essential component of the lean manufacturing philosophy.
RAD was first introduced by author and consultant James Martin in 1991. Martin recognized and then took advantage of the endless malleability of software in designing development models. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a methodology focusing on delivering rapidly through continuous feedback and frequent iterations.
Retrospective analyses are held after a project to determine what worked well and what did not. They are also conducted at the end of an iteration in Agile project management. Agile practitioners call these meetings retrospectives or retros. They are an effective way to check the pulse of a project team, reflect on the work performed to date, and reach a consensus on how to tackle the next sprint cycle. These are the five stages of a retrospective analysis for effective Agile project management: set the stage, gather the data, generate insights, decide on the next steps, and close the retrospective.
Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD) helps businesses discover a balanced approach to agile transition and scaling questions. The ScALed approach helps businesses successfully respond to change. Inspired by a combination of lean and agile values, ScALed is practitioner-based and can be completed through various agile frameworks and practices.
The SMED (single minute exchange of die) method is a lean production framework to reduce waste and increase production efficiency. The SMED method is a framework for reducing the time associated with completing an equipment changeover.
The Spotify Model is an autonomous approach to scaling agile, focusing on culture communication, accountability, and quality. The Spotify model was first recognized in 2012 after Henrik Kniberg, and Anders Ivarsson released a white paper detailing how streaming company Spotify approached agility. Therefore, the Spotify model represents an evolution of agile.
As the name suggests, TDD is a test-driven technique for delivering high-quality software rapidly and sustainably. It is an iterative approach based on the idea that a failing test should be written before any code for a feature or function is written. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an approach to software development that relies on very short development cycles.
Timeboxing is a simple yet powerful time-management technique for improving productivity. Timeboxing describes the process of proactively scheduling a block of time to spend on a task in the future. It was first described by author James Martin in a book about agile software development.
Scrum is a methodology co-created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum was primarily thought for software development projects to deliver new software capability every 2-4 weeks. It is a sub-group of agile also used in project management to improve startups’ productivity.
Scrumban is a project management framework that is a hybrid of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. Scrumban is a popular approach to helping businesses focus on the right strategic tasks while simultaneously strengthening their processes.
Scrum anti-patterns describe any attractive, easy-to-implement solution that ultimately makes a problem worse. Therefore, these are the practice not to follow to prevent issues from emerging. Some classic examples of scrum anti-patterns comprise absent product owners, pre-assigned tickets (making individuals work in isolation), and discounting retrospectives (where review meetings are not useful to really make improvements).
Scrum at Scale (Scrum@Scale) is a framework that Scrum teams use to address complex problems and deliver high-value products. Scrum at Scale was created through a joint venture between the Scrum Alliance and Scrum Inc. The joint venture was overseen by Jeff Sutherland, a co-creator of Scrum and one of the principal authors of the Agile Manifesto.
Six Sigma is a data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating errors or defects in a product, service, or process. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola as a management approach based on quality fundamentals in the early 1980s. A decade later, it was popularized by General Electric who estimated that the methodology saved them $12 billion in the first five years of operation.
Stretch objectives describe any task an agile team plans to complete without expressly committing to do so. Teams incorporate stretch objectives during a Sprint or Program Increment (PI) as part of Scaled Agile. They are used when the agile team is unsure of its capacity to attain an objective. Therefore, stretch objectives are instead outcomes that, while extremely desirable, are not the difference between the success or failure of each sprint.
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an early form of lean manufacturing created by auto-manufacturer Toyota. Created by the Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1940s and 50s, the Toyota Production System seeks to manufacture vehicles ordered by customers most quickly and efficiently possible.
The Total Quality Management (TQM) framework is a technique based on the premise that employees continuously work on their ability to provide value to customers. Importantly, the word “total” means that all employees are involved in the process – regardless of whether they work in development, production, or fulfillment.
The waterfall model was first described by Herbert D. Benington in 1956 during a presentation about the software used in radar imaging during the Cold War. Since there were no knowledge-based, creative software development strategies at the time, the waterfall method became standard practice. The waterfall model is a linear and sequential project management framework.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
