The Uncertain Web

Chapter 2. Navigating the Uncertain Web

So I guess an escalator is stairs with progressive enhancement. Or those walkways in the airports that make you walk really fast. I guess that’s just a floor that’s been progressively enhanced. An electric toothbrush is a progressively enhanced toothbrush.

— Jeremy Keith

So, now that you know what you’re up against and are ready to wrap the whole Web in a big, inclusive bear hug, it’s time to learn about some of the ways you can build widely compatible sites and applications.

What follows is a series of high-level ideas that will allow you to approach compatibility in a nimble way and piece together your own solutions to these issues when you’re faced with the Web’s uncertainty. If you’re an experienced developer, then many of the lessons presented here might be familiar to you. Even if they are, looking at them in the context of uncertainty will likely give you new or different perspectives on the ways these concepts could be used to create compatible web solutions.

All of these concepts will be touched on and expanded throughout the book.

Read this chapter, get the conceptual flavor, and then you’ll fill out the details with some of the technical samples in this book, with your own work, and with your own research. That said, it should be noted that some of these topics are worthy of a book of their own, so we won’t be able to cover everything in detail.

Additionally, it will cement these concepts if, while reading this chapter, you start to ...