When good websites go bad - graceful degrading
Good practice
Good practice dictates that you support the major browsers in their latest and greatest encarnations (IE7, FF2 etc) but also recognise the statistics - meaning you need to support older, popular browsers (such as IE6). This means that your work supports the majority of the users.
A bad way to think about this is THEM supporting YOU. You can't expect all your users to have the latest and greatest versions of everything so you need to ensure your site degrades gracefully.
Graceful degrading
If you have a heavy reliance on a specific technology then you need to accomodate for those who don't have it, whether it be creating an alternative site (flash vs. non-flash) or ensuring that your Javascript magic is still usable with it disabled.
When good websites go bad
Here is where the juicy bit is, who has captured my interest in having the least degradable site? It's not enough having a site that falls over in alternative browsers but what really makes me smile is when a world-wide brand of multi-national success has a website that offers nothing to those with Javascript disabled.
That's right, Gucci.com come on down!
In full glory
It's an attractive site that looks like it should be Flash. See images below:
Nice site, no?
Let's turn off Javascript and see what we get:
Absolutely nothing...
Why nothing?
The site was built around the Javascript Scriptaculous framework, emulating a flash site with plenty of smooth moves and image transitions. It's nice stuff but heavily relying on one technology.
What could be improved
Well, without Javascript you can't view anything at all. No "You need Javascript" message, no text only version, nothing at all. How useful is that? If you didn't understand the internet and the technologies surrounding it and didn't have JS turned on, you'd assume the site was broken indefinately.
Conclusion
This concludes my first article in the series where Gucci takes my award for a high profile site that gets nuked with one technology removed. Without warning or explanation the site does nothing, with no instruction of how to make it work. Good work guys. A massive brand failing to offer anything like graceful degrading.
Episodes
Episode one - graceful degrading
Episode two - UI design (coming soon)
Episode three - Multimedia disaster
Episode four - High profile problems
Episode five onwards - TBC
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