Progressive enhancement follows the Golden Rule because it is concerned with the “other”. That’s why accessibility is such a key part of building websites following the progressive enhancement philosophy. It’s about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes—someone whose abilities and situation probably differ from yours. We are a diverse lot after all.

One hell of a read from Aaron Gustafson on the Golden rule, egalitarianism and the philosophy of progressive enhancement in web design.

Usability goes all the way. It starts right at the database design. Or actually even at the design of the programming language. Most people, working on system that can use a grain of usability, tend to think that usability is only and merely a magical trade of arranging elements on an interface. But, if the database architecture is wrong, the code will be wrong. If the code is wrong, the behaviour is wrong. And if the behaviour is wrong, then no javascript can ever solve the real problem.

- Bèr Kessels

Information architecture. Usability. Accessibility. Web standards. If you don’t know about these things, stop designing websites until you have learned. Competence in graphic design is merely a baseline; it does not qualify you to create user experiences for the web.

- Jeffrey Zeldman

On any given Web page, users will either…

• click something that appears to take them closer to the fulfillment of their goal,
• or click the Back button on their Web browser.

Mark Hurst