I just read an article from one of my faves, Jeremy Keith, titled How do I convince…?, and I chuckled to myself several times because it is also something I’ve heard many times, something to the effect of “But how do I convince my boss/client to let me do [something modern/progressive]?”

I chuckled because the answer was always easy to me: You don’t ask, you just do.

What boss/client in their right mind would ever complain about something that makes their product better?

Of course, if completing the task took you twice as long, I could see them saying something, but as long as you’re doing progressive enhancement right, 1) no one should notice, and 2) certainly no one should complain!

I can still remember the first time I told a boss of mine, slyly, weeks after a project had gone live, in response to his saying “You know, we should have added Microformats to this,” that in fact I had. He had no idea, nor did he care, because they didn’t hurt anything, didn’t take (that much) more time, and only made our product better.

So, if you’re on top of your game, keeping (at least somewhat) on top the latest-and-greatest methods, then when the time comes to be able to use something, you should just be able to roll it out and bake it right in!  Sans approval, sans worry.

Go ahead, give it a shot, what have you got to lose, the chance to make the web a little better?

Happy coding,
Atg

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