There was a post on Metafilter highlighting a similar approach to graceful javascripting, back when javascript was a question, not an answer. Basically, serve

There was a post on Metafilter highlighting a similar approach to graceful javascripting, back when javascript was a question, not an answer. Basically, serve a page with formatting done via table layout, and then rewrite it with javascript in the client to use more modern layout tools, depending on which features were available on the browser.