Progressively-enhanced frontends

The document Building a resilient frontend using progressive enhancement from the GOV.UK Service Manual provides valuable insights into creating faster, simpler, and more accessible web pages. It highlights examples such as using a <select> element in place of a dynamic autocomplete in case something goes wrong. Additionally, it advises considering multiple scenarios where CSS/JS files fail to load, causing the page to behave as if these functionalities are disabled.

Although the concept is not entirely new - the last update was in 2019 - it’s still a helpful reminder that not every web app needs to be a single-page application (SPA). Default to HTML and treat everything else as usability enhancements, not core dependencies for the application’s basic functionality.