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Since the beginning of web development, programmers have had the duty to guarantee a correct and possibly full user experience to all the web site visitors, regardless the browser that they use.
If we stop for a second and think about the above statement, we can probably understand how that is a very big problem. Allow me a strange similarity: it is as if we need to design a new shoe that fits all sizes. It surely can be done. It involves a lot of work and it won't probably satisfy all the users.
Two methods to solve the problem
Web developers normally use two different approaches in order to face the issue: the first and older one is graceful degradation. A bit newer method is called progressive enhancement.
The two methods are easily confused, but they have a big difference: graceful degradation focuses on browsers capability, while progressive enhancement focuses on content.
Web development, web design and programming.