Progressive enhancement

The bottleneck of performance with any React application is downloading and running the JavaScript. Our entire application code will be contained in JavaScript files--and our app won't work until those are executed. That means our users may be stuck staring at a white screen (with zero functionality) until that JavaScript is ready to go.

Progressive enhancement is a technique that aims to fix that problem. In essence, it means that a user's experience should get progressively better as the application downloads, depending on the user's browser. In other words, the application experience improves as time goes on (and more of the application downloads), and as a user's software improves.

A user with the most modern browser, the fastest internet connection, and the application fully downloaded will have the best experience, but a user with an outdated browser, a shaky connection, and who just landed on the page will also have a quality experience.

This means our React.js application needs to have some functionality without any JavaScript. This is a fun challenge.

Think of our UX as a series of layers, from good to fantastic, that we build up as time goes on.