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What is Progressive Enhancement?

A web design strategy that starts with basic functionality for all browsers and progressively adds advanced features for capable ones.

Progressive enhancement builds from a baseline of semantic HTML that works everywhere, adds CSS for visual presentation, then layers JavaScript for interactivity. This ensures content is accessible even if CSS or JavaScript fails to load. The approach contrasts with graceful degradation (building for modern browsers first, then patching for older ones). Examples include forms that work without JavaScript (standard submit), images with proper alt text, and server-side rendering with client-side enhancement. Progressive enhancement aligns with web accessibility, SEO (search engines primarily read HTML), and resilience. Feature detection (not browser detection) guides which enhancements to apply.

Related Terms

HTTP/3
The latest HTTP version that uses QUIC instead of TCP, providing faster connections and better performance on unreliable networks.
Lazy Loading
A technique that delays loading non-critical resources until they are needed, improving initial page load performance.
Meta Tags
HTML elements in the page head that provide metadata about the document for browsers, search engines, and social media platforms.
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A distributed network of servers that delivers web content to users from the geographically closest location.
HATEOAS
Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State — a REST constraint where API responses include links to related actions and resources.
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
An HTTP mechanism that allows web pages to request resources from a different domain than the one serving the page.
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