Polymer (library)

Polymer is a software library used to define and style Web Components. The library is developed by Google. Modern design principles are implemented as a separate project using Google's Material Design design language.

Development

Public development of Polymer began in Nov 14, 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, 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 Material Design 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.^[1]

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 issue with. This culminated with the release of Polymer 1.0 in 2015, which was the first "production ready" version of the library.^[2] Version 1.0 significantly improved the performance of Polymer, reducing load times by up to 7 times.^[3] 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.

Usage

Polymer has begun to gain increasing recognition in the market, with special attention paid to its structured design process, allowing for a "lego block" structure.^[4]

Libraries using Polymer

Vaadin Elements extends the Polymer element catalog with elements designed for business app use.

References

External links

• https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/
• Webcomponents.org