Polymer is an open-source

JavaScript library A JavaScript library is a library of pre-written JavaScript code that allows for easier development of JavaScript-based applications, especially for AJAX and other web-centric technologies. Libraries With the expanded demands for JavaScript, an ea ...

for building

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

s using

Web Components Web Components are a set of features that provide a standard component model for the Web allowing for encapsulation and interoperability of individual HTML elements. Primary technologies used to create them include: * Custom Elements: APIs to ...

. The library is being developed by

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developers and contributors on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

. Modern design principles are implemented as a separate project using

Material Design Material Design (codenamed Quantum Paper) is a design language developed by Google in 2014. Expanding on the "cards" that debuted in Google Now, Material Design uses more grid-based layouts, responsive animations and transitions, padding, and d ...

design principles. Polymer is used by a number of Google services and websites, including

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

, YouTube Gaming, the redesigned Google Earth (since 2017),

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2015 and 2016 websites,

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, redesign of

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and Allo for web (until its shutdown in 2019). Other notable users include

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

, Electronics Arts, Comcast,

Nuxeo Nuxeo is a software company making an open source content management system. Corporate history Nuxeo was founded in the year 2000 by Stefane Fermigier. Eric Barroca became the CEO and Director of the management Board in December 2008. Sometime ...

ING Ing, ING or ing may refer to: Art and media * '' ...ing'', a 2003 Korean film * i.n.g, a Taiwanese girl group * The Ing, a race of dark creatures in the 2004 video game '' Metroid Prime 2: Echoes'' * "Ing", the first song on The Roches' 1992 ...

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McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hambur ...

BBVA Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (), better known by its initialism BBVA, is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. It is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and is present ...

, IBM and

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

History

Public development of Polymer began in November 2013 with the release of a Promises Polyfill. This steadily expanded into a web design library covering visual styling guidelines (via Material Design),

data binding In computer programming, data binding is a general technique that binds data sources from the provider and consumer together and synchronizes them. This is usually done with two data/information sources with different languages, as in XML data bin ...

, and a large number of "Core" and "Paper" Web Components. ''Core'' components were originally envisioned to encompass generic functionality that would be essential to most websites, while ''Paper'' components were intended to provide more specialized components with

concepts forming a key part of their design. A major milestone was reached with the release of Version 0.5, which was considered the first version of the project ready for use by early adopters. Google continued to revise the design of Polymer after the release of 0.5, with special consideration given to the performance issues a number of developers found. This culminated with the release of Polymer 1.0 in 2015, which was the first "production ready" version of the library. Version 1.0 significantly improved the performance of Polymer, reducing load times by up to 7 times. With version 1.0 Google split the elements from the Polymer project to clearly distinguish the elements catalog from the Polymer polyfill & webcomponents-sugaring library. On 14–15 September 2015, Google organized a Polymer Summit in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

. On 17–18 October 2016, Google organized a Polymer Summit in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. On 22–23 August 2017, Google organized a Polymer Summit in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

. On 2 May 2018, the Polymer team announced that any future development in Polymer will shift away from its two-way binding and its template system, and will focus on LitElement (still part of Polymer) and one-way bindings.

Features

Polymer provides a number of features over

vanilla Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla (genus), Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the Mexican species, flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). Pollination is required to make the p ...

Web Components: * Simplified way of creating custom elements * Both One-way and Two-way data binding * Computed properties * Conditional and repeat templates * Gesture events

Usage

Polymer has begun to gain increasing recognition in the market, with spikes in use in 2015 and 2016 as documented by the website BuiltWith. Special attention has been paid to its structured design process, allowing for an

interoperable Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader def ...

"Lego Block" structure.

Custom elements

Custom elements can be created using ES (ECMAScript, most commonly

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

) modules with classes. Custom element definition comprises CSS style, HTML template of the element's local DOM, element properties, lifecycle callbacks and JavaScript methods: import from '@polymer/polymer' class HelloElement extends PolymerElement window.customElements.define(HelloElement.is, HelloElement); The element defined above can be used in HTML code:

References

External links