Progressive Enhancement (PE) is a content-driven approach to web design. It centres itself around providing a basic user experience and functionality to users on all browsers and devices while reserving the cream for only the most advanced browsers that can run the entire code.
It’s a web development strategy that puts content first and works towards making the website more compatible across browsers, to ensure stability.
In contrast to the above, some websites will only work in a favorable environment. While others with PE on their side will aim for compatibility across browsers and devices to display content even on a slow network. For example, waiting for web fonts to load on a website can distract the user’s attention and force him/her to withdraw from your site.
It may not be a web design technology as such, but it is an advanced web development strategy that makes sure building websites has an end goal from the start out. It aims for the website to show improved performance, responsiveness as well as adaptability to different platforms while looking at content as king. As a developer, you decide on a basic level of user experience that you can provide to get your message across no matter which browser or device or network a user may be on - outdated or new
Principles of Progressive Enhancement:
1. Accessibility to basic content on all web browsers.
2. Providing basic functionality no matter how outdated a browser maybe.
3. Minimal semantics involved for all content.
4. Layout enhancement with the externally linked CSS.
5. Behavior enhancement with externally linked JavaScript.
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6. Respecting browser preferences of end users.
Benefits of PE:
1. Maintenance
Sites made with PE are easier to maintain as content/functionality and design are treated as two separate sides of the same coin. Tweaking elements of visual design is not going to affect the site’s content or functionality. Moreover, re-theming was never this easy. CSS files can just be changed every time you feel the need to modify or enhance the look of a website without disturbing the other elements on site.
2. Reach
With the PE model, a website’s reach can be increased considerably as so many more users will be able to have access to the same content on your site. And the fact that your website is optimized for the most outdated browsers, be it on your phone or PC, is indicative of a wider reach. This could translate into more visitors or even possible customers.
3. Content is King
The inside out approach in this model of web design renders content as king. In other words, it optimizes the website by laying its foundation in content, before adding the visual elements to it and scripting. This makes access to content a smooth experience for the user and provides a strong foundation to build your design around. All you need is a well-structured code to back it up. It will also help lessen issues with formatting.
4. SEO
In terms of Search Engine Optimization, this web design technique can help the search engine spiders to crawl your page with much ease as the content-loading time is minimal, thus making it more accessible. This will aid your SEO efforts towards having your website listed in top search results or having it indexed sooner. thus providing an edge to an ecommerce website development company which can take full advantage of this useful feature of PE.
Way Forward
Progressive Enhancement is a useful technique that has been around for quite some time now. It focuses on providing the best possible website or web app experience while taking care of all that could go wrong in the process. It’s the way forward from techniques like Graceful Degradation which involves a lot of blind or unplanned coding.
An ecommerce website design company can employ this improved methodology in web design to get to as many users as possible and turn them into potential customers or leads for a business. Mobile-friendly user experience becomes important in the day and age of online shopping, which PE can provide via its holistic approach towards web development.
You will have to hire wordpress developer who use this model of coding and arrive at the great results by aiming to optimize user-experience from the beginning. Setting the baseline at content certainly goes a long way in web design as it strengthens the very foundation of a web development project.
Conclusion
The reason why we need to embrace this approach as being forward and more advanced is solely based on its ability to make access to information unbiased and unperturbed. With newer technologies replacing the old, there comes a time when the software fails the hardware and the need for some kind of up-gradation becomes inevitable. PE is all about catching up with the current wave in web technology, hand-in-hand with the old.
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