In defence of graceful degradation and where progressive enhancement comes in by Adam Silver

This does a really good job of describing the difference between progressive enhancement and graceful degradation …but I don’t buy the conclusion: I don’t think that feature detection equates to graceful degradation. I do agree though that, when it comes to JavaScript, the result of progressive enhancement is that the language degrades gracefully.

This is progressive enhancement. An approach to making interfaces that ensures JavaScript degrades gracefully—something that HTML and CSS do automatically.

But there’s a difference between something degrading gracefully (the result) and graceful degradation (the approach).

For Many AJAX is Not Degrading, But it Must :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net

"...it must degrade well. It must still be accessible. It must be usable. If not, it is a cool useless piece of rubbish for some or many people."