Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Progressive enhancement

Progressive enhancement uses web technologies in a layered fashion that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also providing those with better bandwidth or more advanced browser software an enhanced version of the page.

This concept is an improvement of the now outdated standard graceful degradation. The main difference being that layout in different browsers no longer need to be identical. The basic contents and functionalities must work in every browser, and from this starting point enhanced layout can be added.

This practice is also meant to encourage end users to use the latest browsers, in order to benefit from the latest design enhancements (as well as many other benefits).

Examples applied to Wikipedia

1. {{Border-radius}} and {{Box-shadow}} are progressive enhancements.
2. The usage of a CSS3 selector for left-aligning row headers marked as such is a progressive enhancement. See MediaWiki talk:Common.css#some wikitable ideas.
3. The usage of a CSS3 pseudo class nth-child for table striping is a progressive enhancement. See Help talk:Table#Alternating row colors?

Resources

• Do Websites Need to Look Exactly the Same in Every Browser?, Dan Cederholm.
  • Rewarding vs. “This Is Broken”
  • Decision Makers Who Get It
• DoWebsitesNeedToLookExactlyTheSameInEveryBrowser.com seems quite humorous, but is actually a good example. This very simple page contains the same content in every browser. But the styling of that content changes in almost every browser.