Responsible JavaScript

Progressive enhancement—as it applies to JavaScript, anyway—is this idea that we first implement a website’s essential functionality without JavaScript. Once we have a baseline experience that works without JavaScript, we then apply JavaScript selectively to provide a better experience for those who can benefit from it (http://bkaprt.com/rjs39/02-16). Progressive enhancement is a hard sell because it requires consensus that an experience should function in more than one ideal way. Yet its chief benefit is that redundant layers of functionality make a website more accessible and inclusive no matter where it’s accessed from.