Andy Clarke CSS Workshop –
Progressive Enhancement
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
We have just hit lunchtime in this and I am really enjoying it. Andy Clarke is a great presenter/host and knows his stuff so its always a great learning workshop.
I think the main thing that seems to come from a lot of the presentations or workshops I have been to recently is “Progressive Enhancement”. A lot of this has been banded around the web in various blogs. It is mainly based around the idea that the web is always evolving and enhancing, and that a website does not need to look the same in every browser. Dan Cenderholm provided the best answer to this here (which is a great site!).
I suppose the most difficult thing about this is getting yourself out of that mindset. As a graphic designer at heart I find it really difficult if work is not finished properly and to my perfecting standards, and I think that is why I find it so hard to let go concerning IE6. It dosn’t help that my work stats show half our users still use this (so called browser). I ended up spending far to much time getting this website finished for IE6 just because I was thinking in that mindset and it didn’t really occur to me, luckily I didn’t let anything in that progress hold me back from the design I wanted to implement and using advanced techniques for Gecko/Webkit based browsers. I will be and I am constantly adding new features to fully utilize these features and will be doing a project on the iphone and CSS3 coming up soon. I won’t be supporting IE6 in the new CSS I am doing and a lot will not work properly in IE7 either but importantly it won’t break the site, it just won’t be as pretty as Firefox, Safari and Opera.
In conclusion I think it is really important that as web designers we push forwards standards and semantically correct code, the latest browsers allow us to do this (well some of IE7) and constantly looking to implement the new features and enhancements the future thinking browsers allow us. At the end of the day as long as its not broken in IE6/7 and still functions why not let the people who use the next generation browsers enjoy a much richer browsing experience. Now just to get myself out of the mindset and convince my boss 
Will update this post this evening at the end of the day
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May 14th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I really like his presentation although i have never directly in the presentation hall. I wish you had an mp3 file of his presentation to share!! I’m looking forward..
May 17th, 2008 at 3:41 am
Great post, but the link to dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com is briken, you spelt exactly wrong.
May 17th, 2008 at 3:46 am
fixed…thanks
May 19th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
It’s really interesting to see (actually read) how your view changed since your earlier post about pixel perfect design on multiple browsers. I totally agree that using standards, and semantic code and pushing the boundaries, while not breaking the site on less advanced browsers is the way to go. Great post!
May 19th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
It’s interesting, I guess the main thing for me is getting myself out of the frameset when I am surrounded by it on a regular basis and being made to get things right for out of date browsers.
I have just started implementing some of the things I spoke about on my work site and there will be some updates on here over the wekeend based on webkit.
Its all about teaching the clients that it doesn’t have to look the same!
May 20th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Can you please fix my name on my previous comment? It has accidentally some extra characters…
))
Cheers
May 10th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
perfect design .. thank you