I had written a post a couple months ago, stressing the importance of semantic HTML. I feel good about that article, but I had originally meant to write more about the importance of progressive enhancement. Today, while I was reading an article by Bruce Lawson where he posted a list of interesting articles as he is wont to do, the last article really grabbed my attention. It opened with:

It seems to me that we are slowly switching from publishing content for the Web, to making content accessible to Screen-Readers (SR) - from targeting users, to focusing on devices and modern browsers.

We seem to be in the exact same prediciment that caused the stagnated IE: we're targetting specific browers, even when we have the tools, knowledge, and more importantly foresight to be better than this. To be better than building "Webkit only" sites. I highly suggest that you read it here.

If you want to find out more about progressive enhancement, check out Designing with Progressive Enhancement by the excellent people at Filament Group.

Don't make the mistakes of the past.