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Progressive Enhancement vs Mobile First Design

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 use mobile first design when creating modern web applications, especially for consumer-facing sites with significant mobile traffic, as it improves performance, accessibility, and user experience on smartphones. Here's our take.

🧊Nice Pick

Progressive Enhancement

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

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

Mobile First Design

Developers should use Mobile First Design when creating modern web applications, especially for consumer-facing sites with significant mobile traffic, as it improves performance, accessibility, and user experience on smartphones

Pros

  • +It forces prioritization of essential features, reduces unnecessary elements, and aligns with Google's mobile-first indexing for better SEO
  • +Related to: responsive-web-design, css-media-queries

Cons

  • -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

Use Progressive Enhancement if: You want it's crucial for ensuring accessibility compliance, improving seo through semantic html, and creating robust applications that degrade gracefully when advanced features fail and can live with specific tradeoffs depend on your use case.

Use Mobile First Design if: You prioritize it forces prioritization of essential features, reduces unnecessary elements, and aligns with google's mobile-first indexing for better seo over what Progressive Enhancement offers.

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The Bottom Line
Progressive Enhancement wins

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

Disagree with our pick? nice@nicepick.dev