The word progressive in progressive enhancement means creating a design that achieves a simpler-but-still-usable experience for users of older browsers and devices with limited capabilities, while at the same time being a design that progresses the user experience up to a more-compelling, fully-featured experience for users of newer browsers and devices with richer capabilities.

Feature detection is generally used to determine whether browsers can handle more modern functionality, while polyfills are often used to add missing features with JavaScript.

Special notice should be taken of accessibility. Acceptable alternatives should be provided where possible.

Progressive enhancement is a useful technique that allows web developers to focus on developing the best possible websites while making those websites work on multiple unknown user agents. Graceful degradation is related but is not the same thing and is often seen as going in the opposite direction to progressive enhancement. In reality both approaches are valid and can often complement one another.