During Dan Cederholm’s talk at An Event Apart he brought up the topic of progressive enhancement. I’m pretty excited about all the things that CSS3 will allow us to do but I also have some reservations. Do we go crazy and start embracing all these new-fangled CSS things or do we look at our content and design and see if they add meaning and clarity to our message?
<Bling />
The excitement around border radius and text shadow are definitely understandable. It makes me think of the HTML days of yesteryear when I was just learning. I thought that <Blink> and <Marquee> were THE COOLEST THINGS IN THE WORLD!!! But let’s stop a second and think – The way I was using these tags were not thought out and they didn’t add to the message I was trying to convey. They were just BLING.
We need to back up our design decisions instead of always jumping on the “cool things” bandwagon.
I’m Guilty…
I worked on a website a few months ago in which I implemented rounded corners. I have to admit that I really had no reasoning for using border radius on this navigation. Now that I take a look at it again it does not really fit with the design either. I think of sports or athletic training as something that’s straight forward and rounded corners are more of a softer touch. So
Some Progressive Enhancements To Consider…
…if they suit your design 
Border Radius
RBGA Transparency
Text Shadow
Apple Style nav tutorial that uses text shadow
Conclusion
Just because you can does not mean you should…unless you have a reason for it.
What do you think?
Do you live by CSS3 and think its the greatest thing since sliced bread? Leave a comment! Are you an ie6 lover and don’t use anything not supported by the outdated browser? I want to hear from you! Chime in and let your voice be heard.
BTW- you can download the slides from Dan’s AEA09 talk here (PDF)
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6 Responses to “My Thoughts On Progressive Enhancement”
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September 20th, 2009 at 4:59 pm[...] the site appears relatively the same and functional in the lesser-privileged browsers. Consider using progressive enhancement for browsers that can handle nifty things like border-radius and [...]
Wes Baker says:
It’s all a need thing, but even that is the wrong word for it. I noticed your tweet about bling and couldn’t help but think that we could make sites much like they were made 10 years ago, with gray backgrounds, black text, blue links and the groove chiseled horizontal rules (when we weren’t using the animated gif horizontal rules).
Much of what we do is embellishment and bling, especially once we get past the markup. So, yes, this is all bling, but its the bling we’ve been shouting for for the past years and don’t use shadows and border-radius on a site that won’t benefit from it, but definitely use it when you start slicing out an image of text, or when you start using the opacity property.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:49 am
Niki Brown says:
Wes
I don’t think that everything in web design is decoration. If a design element has good reasoning behind it and helps communicate a message it’s not bling
I’m just pointing out that we should think before adding these elements to our designs.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:21 am
Mike says:
This question is about a new application of the mentality that says that you should do something because you can. It applies to any medium, or really any decision a person makes (my car can go 120mph, but should I take it there?) There are definitely appropriate situations to use rounded corners, opacity, or what have you. (Was blink ever really a good thing, though? I always thought it was visual torture.) And you have to know how to do it because you might have a situation that calls for it. Just don’t use techniques, visual stylings, interactive flourishes, etc. that you don’t need to. Maybe that’s easier said than done. Just a couple weeks ago, I heard the words, “We’re paying for four-color, so we should get our money’s worth and use more colors,” come out of my mouth.
June 24th, 2009 at 5:19 am
Emily Gonsalves says:
I agree.
Personally, I’ve used rounded corners a few times, generally because it’s a lot faster to implement than slicing images. I always consider if it’s good for the design before doing it.
And while I know there are fancy fixes out there to make it work in more browsers; square corners don’t break the layout. They just don’t look as polished.
I think many of us go through the phase of “blink tag? That is COOL stuff” when we’re starting out. I guess it’s a reflection of how excited we are about learning web design. After a while, I think we start to consider more carefully what actually adds to the content, what makes it better than defaults.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Maria Porto says:
I believe it’s all about your main target, what king of hardware this audience owns. That’s why research and statistics are so important.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:46 am