What is the difference between "Graceful Degradation" and "Progressive Enhancement"?

They both describe patterns for how to implement experiences, but the difference lies in the perspective on achieving compatibility.

• 🔼 Progressive Enhancement (Old to New): Starting from an older experience and moving forward to adopt new experiences
• 🔽 Graceful Degradation (New to Old): Starting from a newer experience and moving backward to maintain compatibility with older experiences

If there were no constraints, adopting the latest environment would be ideal, but the reality is that we often need to support legacy users to some extent, which is why different approaches are necessary to achieve a consistent experience. Looking around, we can see these patterns applied in various fields on the web; for example, consider:

• 👉🏻 Is the early trend of skeuomorphism a form of design progressive enhancement?
• 👉🏻 Is loading high-resolution images on high-speed networks while loading low-resolution images on low-speed networks a form of graceful degradation?

The web is changing rapidly, but necessary compatibility based on user needs still needs to be addressed, and these two patterns can be relied upon to make decisions based on the situation.