Progressive enhancement is a luxury, and not everyone can afford it. It vastly increases your test surfaces, and requires multiple designs for every page/featur

Progressive enhancement is a luxury, and not everyone can afford it. It vastly increases your test surfaces, and requires multiple designs for every page/feature. Only if you're doing it wrong. (I.e. if you re-implement planned JS functionality in HTML, which sounds like what you're describing.) Progressive enhancement done right starts with a fully functional prototype of the application done in HTML. Then you enhance your workflow and performance with JavaScript. Enhance, not re-implement. One big advantage of PE is that it encourages semantic use of HTML, which allows for declarative and reusable JS libraries. Every single person I've met who said it's "impossible" or "too expensive" never really tried. You don't sound like you've ever really tried it either.