Home → The Classics → Farai's Codelab
Heydon Pickering on How to Think About Progressive Enhancement
Published:
See Heydon Pickering on How to Think About Progressive Enhancement on twitter.com
Worry less about people disabling JavaScript for websites.
Worry more about JavaScript disabling websites for people.
– Heydon Pickering (@heydonworks) on
This is a great way to think of progressive enhancement. All too often I’ve come across websites where JavaScript gets in the way. Sometimes it can stop me from navigating a site when the hamburger nav button stops working. Other times it’s ruins a perfectly good article as it brings up a paywall or some bullshit cookie banner. Biggest of all is how developers insist on using it to deliver static content.
Sure users don’t disable JavaScript intentionally (though I sometimes do), but given how expensive JavaScript can be, it can inadvertantly disable users. Progressive enhancement is about considering such cases and developing websites with JavaScripts limitations in mind.
Also See
- Heydon’s very own website which at the time on writing this point illustrates this point,
- Remy Sharp who discusses this site and the reactions to it,
- and Heydon’s video on Progressive Enhancement. It’s neat.