I always enjoy Paul Boag’s posts on Boagworld when I get a chance to read them. His most recent post, Where are My Rounded Corners?, includes a great downloadable factsheet that helps explain how static design comps play out in various browsers. Here’s an excerpt:
“One of the biggest areas of confusion among our clients is progressive enhancement. They wonder why the beautiful design they signed off doesn’t look the same in older browsers…” He goes on to say that to address this, one thing they are doing is showing clients the designs in the browser rather than as static images.
Another excerpt:
“For too long we have treated design on the web like designing for print. This is changing. The web is a very different medium to print. When people view your website they do so with a variety of different browsers (from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome) and devices (from laptops to mobile phones). Each device and software version displays websites in subtlety different ways. Where in print you know everybody will see the same thing, on the web there are no such guarantees.”
Now, I’m not a developer so I don’t know exactly how to code for progressive enhancement, but Boagworld has numerous past posts that delve further into the details. I appreciate his conclusion in a related post that, “On projects with limited budget and time, effort is better allocated to important elements such as understanding business objectives or user testing. ”
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Progressive Enhancement and Effective Browser Support
by Molly Malsam on May 10th, 2011 | ~ minute read
