Polymer is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

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. They can be included in a website by embedding it directl ...

for building

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

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. Web Components are a popular approach when building microfrontends. Primary t ...

. The library is being developed by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

developers and contributors on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. Modern design principles are implemented as a separate project using

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

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

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, YouTube Gaming, the redesigned

Google Earth Google Earth is a web mapping, web and computer program created by Google that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satelli ...

(since 2017),

Google I/O Google I/O, or simply I/O, is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. The name "I/O" is taken from the number googol, with the "I" representing the first digit "1" in a googol and the "O" representing the s ...

2015 and 2016 websites, Google Play Music, redesign of

Google Sites Google Sites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google For ...

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

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

, Electronics Arts,

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

, Nuxeo,

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

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

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, Interxion and

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

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 ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

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

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

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

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

. 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 flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). ''Vanilla'' is not Autogamy, autogamous, so pollination ...

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 de ...

"Lego Block" structure. LitElement was developed by the Google Chrome team as part of the Polymer project in 2018. LitElement was designed to be a lightweight and easy-to-use framework for creating web components that can be used with any front-end framework or library.

Custom elements

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

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

) 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