UPDATE: Ok, so phase 1 is going to be a week late. Just to many other things keeping me busy.

UPDATE: The launch is going to be a day late, expect it tomorrow.

I have read about these topics a lot and I believe in them but, the only way to ensure I am not just blindly following a trend or, praising something I really have not fully experienced myself, is to go on a journey and develop a website that demonstrates that this can in deed be done and that progressive enhancement and graceful degradation are not just clever sounding words.

Our branding agency, Volume4, currently have no website and this is definitely not ideal. Seeing this as an opportunity, I have have decided to make the volume4.com website my case study in progressive enhancement and graceful degradation. The technologies decided on is going to be the obvious HTML and CSS but then as the website will inevitably going to require some interaction and dynamic database driven content, we decided to use Ruby on Rails as our MVC framework. If and when we need to use either JavaScript or Ajax we will use the Prototype library along with Scriptaculous. Scriptaculous was not chosen over jQuery, DOMAssistant or some of the other framewroks/libraries because we have a particular preference for it but, the tight integration that comes bundled with Ruby On Rails makes it a no brainer and gives me a chance to play with a new library.

So how is this whole thing going to work. Starting Monday 07 July 2008, the website at www.volume4.com will be enhanced in weekly cycles to add another level, to either enhance the look and feel or the usability/interactivity of the website, all the while ensuring that the site will gracefully degrade, stay standards complaint and accessible. I am looking forward to this project and will post regularly about choices made and how things are going in general.