Progressive Enhancement

ronaldlees

ronaldlees

A few years ago, progressive enhancement became the rage on some websites, along with the lazy-loading of images. Both of those techniques rely on javascript, which I often have disabled.

I wonder if anyone has had the same experiences as I, when viewing progressively enhanced image pages with javascript disabled. That is to say the images (which are blurred) look awful. Worse - at least for me - is that the blurred image seems to cause nausea. I can disable image loading altogether in FF, but then I lose the 80 percent of site images that are not progressively enhanced.

Has anyone else noticed this? Suggestions?
 
Seeing this when disabling javascript. What I do is allowing some scripts (the ones you want of the images), and blocking the rest. I use the uMatrix extension in FF for this. Works really nice.
 
MarcoB said:
Seeing this when disabling javascript. What I do is allowing some scripts (the ones you want of the images), and blocking the rest. I use the uMatrix extension in FF for this. Works really nice.
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Thanks for the eye-saving suggestion. Remember those pocemon cards from about twenty years ago? Is that what they were called? I can't remember for sure what they were named, but I wonder if it's the same kind of mechanism. It's the site's JS that runs the enhancement, so I'd guess there's a noscript static image. FF is not involved other than it executes the javascript.
 
I googled it but had never heard of it mentioned before this, or seen it in action that I'm aware of. Do you happen to have a link that demonstrates it?

I only use XHTML and CSS on my site and only enable javaScript on sites I visit selectively.
 
ronaldlees said:
I don't know if news-site links are frowned on here, but this link should demonstrate the blur ...
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'd only seen images need JS enabled to appear, never blurred if it wasn't.
 
aragats said:
Is it better than NoScript? I do use NoScript, but not always happy with it.
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I think it's easier to use, but best thing to do is just try it. uMatrix shows in a matrix (yes hence the name :)), per site, which elements you want to block or allow (pics, CSS, multimedia, ads, scripts).
 
Thanks, MarcoB ! It's really better and more flexible. I easily discovered, that e.g. WhtsApp's blurred pictures I mentioned can be fixed by unblocking XHR.
 
The blurred images occur because the sites download a minimum payload image to occupy the space of the page and assume a minimum capable browser and connection such as 3G on a cheap phone. They use javascript to determine the capabilities of the browser and the network connection. If they are both capable of handling a larger image, then a heavier payload image is downloaded and replaces the "blurry" one. One of many progressive enhancement techniques.
 
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