NYCPHP Meetup

[tedd]

At 9:26 AM -0500 2/26/07, Cliff Hirsch wrote:
>I'm seeing more and more applications that simply do not work if 
>JavaScript is turned off. In fact, I'm looking at purchasing a slick 
>shopping cart that seems great, but I think the lack of progressive 
>fallback is a show stopper.
>
>Whatever happened to building a robust PHP application and only then 
>layering on the client-side enhancements? To me this lack of 
>progressive fall-back is just laziness, arrogance, or the victim of 
>the usual time pressures. This isn't an opinionated group - right?! 
>So I curious to here what others think.
>
>Are there any data sources that measure what browsers people are 
>using today and what percentage of people turn JS off or don't have 
>it?
>
>Cliff

Cliff:

I don't like the term "fall-back" because it infers that this is 
something we should consider adding instead of it being the first 
thing we should do with enhancement being added later.

Currently, programming an application for the net is like drawing a 
path through a mine field for people with drastically different size 
feet. Some will make it and others won't -- regardless of what you 
do. But, your job is to guide as many through as possible.

I very much like the concept of progressive enhancement and I believe 
that much of what we can do can have a basic foundation to accomplish 
the same thing without the fluff.

The problem I see, which is not popular with the progressive 
enhancement movement, is that the sometimes the fluff is the 
application. There are reasons why we as developers (well, most of 
us) left the "command line" interface and went GUI -- and those 
reasons include ease of use for the end-user.

I think the real question here -- is what is the purpose of the 
service we're providing?

If the purpose is to provide information, then no doubt, we should 
provide the basic foundation first and then add fluff.

On the other hand, realize that Adobe is not producing Photoshop for 
the blind. So like-applications should be exempt for blind access 
considerations. But, blind people do shop on-line and thus things 
like shopping carts should be made basic with progressive 
enhancements.

However, part of the decision that sighted people use to make their 
purchases is visual. So, in this case providing fluff is really part 
of the essentials.

So, the decision to provide basic access and progressive enhancement 
is really based upon what service you're providing.

On top of those considerations, we still have to deal with the 
real-world differences between browsers. I've found myself several 
times providing a basic foundation and having even that fail between 
browsers, let alone trying to develop accommodative progressive 
enhancements across different platforms well. It's far more 
complicated than a simple "choice" to provide basic access, 
progressive enhancement, or both.

To me, it's doing the best I can with the time and money I have. As 
to how to do it better, I leave that to smarter minds than mine.

Cheers,

tedd

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