Why web standards & progressive enhancement?
We are experiencing the most exciting time to be web designers. Quality sites and applications are emerging so fast we can barely keep up. We are experiencing a transformation in the way we do business, share relationships, how we communicate, and live. The evolving nature of web standards with new technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3 are making the web easier, faster, and more interactive. The astounding growth of the mobile/wireless web keeps us connected all the time, everywhere we happen to be.
But the boundless riches of our technologies also create issues with older browsers and some new devices that have limited or no support for current features. It is important to not only learn to create great websites and applications, but to learn the best practices that will assure our ability to evolve with our industry and always bring effective tools and processes to our practice.
Web standards provide a clear path to using the mark-up languages and scripting languages of the web as they are intended to be used. This path to the processes of design for the web, allows designers to avoid many of the issues faced by those who do their own thing regardless of what works best. In the book Designing with progressive enhancement: Building the web that works for everyone, authors Todd Parker et al., identify three conflicting objectives of web design. “We want to embrace all the exciting new technologies available to deliver compelling, interactive experiences. But at the same time, we’re deeply committed to ensuring that our sites are universally accessible, intuitive, and usable for everyone. And from a development perspective, it’s equally important to write the cleanest and most maintainable code possible” (Parker, T., Toland, P., Jehl, S., & Wachs, M., 2010).
Progressive enhancement is a process of responding to those objectives. It represents a comprehensive way of designing with care and responsibility for the outcome: websites that are available to everyone, with the most significant technologies available at any given time. It is not the only process that works to accomplish these objectives, but one that is recognized by many design professionals, and one that can be the basis of integration with any newer processes that may evolve along with other changes we will experience.
As learners beginning to engage in active study of web design practices, it is important that you work with web standards and recognized methods and processes of design, so that your employers and clients will know that you have the best of tools and training, to tackle the new problems being presented by clients in a changing world.
Parker, T., Toland, P., Jehl, S., & Wachs, M. (2010). Designing with progressive enhancement: Building the web that works for everyone. Berkeley, CA.: New Riders.
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Tags: design process, progressive enhancement, well-formed code
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