JS.next: A Manager's Guide

Chapter 4. Where to Start

It’s settled then. You are going to begin integrating ES6 into your projects. Still, you may have some questions about where to start. Or maybe you would like some best practices for your organization. The following suggestions may make this transition easier.

Incidental Functionality First

Your team will need to gain some momentum when using these new constructs, especially if you’re catching up on your innovation debt. I suggest you pick a portion of your app that isn’t considered “core functionality.” Let your team train up on areas of your app that are value-add and provide incidental functionality. This will allow you to leverage your team’s training process while minimizing any risk involved.

Graceful Degradation

Some browsers have more capabilities than other browsers. Maybe you’ve decided that you want to use some functionality that doesn’t exist in all browsers. In other words, your users will have a different experience on your site, depending on their web browser. When implementing different features for different browsers, there are two competing ideologies:

Progressive enhancement suggests that you begin by building your site for the worst-case and most basic scenario. Once that exists, you add functionality for the more capable browsers.

Graceful degradation suggests that you build your app for the most capable browser. Once that exists, you find alternate functionality or turn off the functionality for less-capable browsers.

I recommend that you ...