Graceful degradation is where a product degrades in such a way as to maintain at least some functionality for as long as possible.
Graceful degradation is where a product degrades in such a way as to maintain at least some functionality for as long as possible.
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This is also a philosophy for building web apps - flexibility to still work if client features are unavailable rather than breaking or refusing to work at all. Someone having JavaScript turned off, for instance - some sites will show you no content with a “JavaScript is required” notice, while others are made to at least display the basic page.
When I led a small dev team making an ecom site I pushed this approach to JavaScript--you should be able to create an account, manage your cart, and check out without JavaScript. All extras with JavaScript just enhance this functionality. Add to cart without leaving the page, a mini cart, client side validation.
Sadly with the rise of SPAs, this concept is totally out the window.
That sounds like a real pain, as if you want to make functionality on old tech, then use new to "spruce it up" that's not redundancy nor graceful degradation, it's just developer torture
To be fair, this was ~12 years ago and the web has changed a lot since then. But being able to submit a form without js still seems reasonable to me.. it also means you are doing proper backend validation. Something I've noticed newer devs sometimes have no concept of.
The concept doesn’t only apply to enabling JavaScript. The web standards are continuously evolving and you often have browsers that aren’t quite as up to date as others. When flexing the latest layout technologies or other functionalities, your website should still at least be usable in Safari.