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Don’t Hold Me Back!
But there is an 800 -pound gorilla in the room: Internet Explorer. Although IE9 has gone a long way to bring the most popular browser in the world up to date with current web standards, the older versions of IE are still around and still used by a sizable portion of the browsing public. According to StatCounter, about 42 percent of browsers are pre-IE9. If you are striving for pixel perfection in those older browsers, you are looking at a sizable time investment to make them work and act the same.
Progressive enhancement solves that problem, as long as you use the following guidelines:
- Basic content should be accessible to all browsers, even if it does not appear in exactly the same format.
- Basic functionality should be accessible to all browsers but may perform and act differently.
- Enhanced layout is provided by externally linked CSS, separating content from styles.
- End user browser preferences are respected, to ensure accessibility needs are met for all visitors.
Clients, however, generally expect pixel perfection at the end of the project. It doesn’t do any good to tell them about progressive enhancement at the final site review meeting; you need to do that from the very beginning. If not in the statement of work (SOW), then explain progressive enhancement at the initial kick-off meeting.
But your clients are web designers or developers, so how do you explain the benefits of progressive enhancement to a less technically literate audience? I find these four points generally do the job:
- Sites are faster to develop: The savings in time can be as much as several weeks, when we don’t spend time adjusting designs for every possibility.
- Code is cheaper to maintain and modify: It takes much less time to make even major design changes in the code, rather than recutting images.
- The client’s brand can be more faithfully replicated online: New CSS styles and web fonts will allow designers the ability to better reflect the clients branding.
- Designs are more versatile: The same web pages can be displayed in a wider variety of devices, including tablets and smart phones without having to change any of the content.
Whenever I present these arguments at a kick-off meeting, the client’s reaction is always the same: Why wouldn’t we use progressive enhancement? This is a clear case where asking for forgiveness is not better than asking for permission.