For our open source case study project, I will be exploring the future of the web - “a new kind of library taking advantage of web components” called Polymer.

Polymer is a pioneering library that makes it faster and easier than ever before to build beautiful applications on the web.

Polymer’s main goal is to make it “easier and faster” to develop applications for any device. That means in addition to web applications in desktop browsers you could use Polymer to build mobile applications in mobile browsers as first-class citizens.

Web Components is a set of specs which let web developers leverage their HTML, CSS and JavaScript knowledge to build widgets that can be reused easily and reliably.

Currently browsers do not support Web Components since specifications are still being carved out. This is where Polymer fills in the gap, it brings the future of “Web Components” to allow developers to use it today. Thus, Polymer is a polyfill that provides “web component” support.

Using Polymer, developers can create Web Components for sharing and building applications faster.

In the next post, I will dive into what Polymer’s all about including how it is licensed and where to go to get involved.