FOUC, and the Death of Progressive Enhancement
summary
Argues that progressive enhancement, as practiced, fails users because layering by technology creates FOUC and FOUT pain, cites webpagetest filmstrips (Chase shows two seconds white and five spinners) and UK stats (1.3% no-JS) to show real impact, surveys client-side features like prefers-reduced-motion and client hints, and proposes a concrete alternative — a fidelity slider (or server-driven fidelity tiers) that toggles images, fonts, scripts and SPA behavior so the site degrades deliberately and measurably rather than flashing broken UX.
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chapters (34)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:23Death of Ideas
- 5:03Rethinking the Web
- 12:14Progressive Enhancement
- 19:04Lies and Misconceptions
- 21:16Responsive Design
- 28:01Tom Dale
- 35:24User Agent
- 36:24Configuration
- 39:41Focus on Each Person
- 40:04Designing for Consistency
- 41:16Zelman
- 43:21Customer
- 46:13Statistics
- 46:41We know better
- 47:29Accessibility
- 48:27People
- 48:52Browser knows best
- 49:12Browser doesnt know
- 50:46User input
- 50:59User input precedent
- 52:55People want the most powerful experience
- 53:06Facebook and Opera Mini learned
- 54:06Moving forward
- 54:31Practice
- 54:49Precedent
- 55:34Nontechnical terms
- 56:34The fidelity slider
- 57:31The server makes a decision
- 57:42fidelity
- 57:57responsive
- 58:23app behavior
- 58:51browser veto
- 59:12first steps
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