Progressive Enhancement vs Graceful Degradation

Developers should use Progressive Enhancement when building websites or applications that need to reach a broad audience, including users on older browsers, low-bandwidth connections, or assistive technologies meets developers should learn and apply graceful degradation when building applications that need to support a wide range of users, such as in enterprise environments, public websites, or regions with varying internet speeds and device capabilities. Here's our take.

Progressive Enhancement

Nice Pick

Developers should use Progressive Enhancement when building websites or applications that need to reach a broad audience, including users on older browsers, low-bandwidth connections, or assistive technologies

Pros

• It's crucial for ensuring accessibility compliance, improving SEO through semantic HTML, and creating robust applications that degrade gracefully when advanced features fail
• Related to: semantic-html, responsive-web-design

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Graceful Degradation

Developers should learn and apply graceful degradation when building applications that need to support a wide range of users, such as in enterprise environments, public websites, or regions with varying internet speeds and device capabilities

Pros

• It is crucial for ensuring accessibility compliance, improving user experience in fallback scenarios, and maintaining functionality during network issues or browser incompatibilities, often used alongside progressive enhancement strategies
• Related to: progressive-enhancement, web-accessibility

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Progressive Enhancement is a methodology while Graceful Degradation is a concept. We picked Progressive Enhancement based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Progressive Enhancement wins

Based on overall popularity. Progressive Enhancement is more widely used, but Graceful Degradation excels in its own space.