Brandon Satrom
Why polyfills matter
The changing landscape of web platform extensibility
From its nascent days, the growth of the web has been marked by the waxing and waning of technologies, frameworks and ideas. Old ideas and technologies expire and fade away, and new ones arise in their place. Much as the cicada molts and leaves behind an old shell as it moves into adulthood, the web has seen countless ideas come and go as it has evolved.
Relics (and Catalysts) of the Web
Remember XHTML? More specifically, do you remember caring deeply about XHTML? You likely do. Do you still care about XHTML? Chances are, the answer is no. The same goes for Flash, DHTML, HTML Components and countless other buzzwords of the web that once felt so alive and important, and now feel like relics of another time.
Occasionally, however, we collectively stumble upon ideas and technologies that stand the test of time. These are ideas that don’t just evolve with the web–they are often a catalyst for the evolution of the web itself. Ideas like Cascading Style Sheets and XMLHTTPRequest, the vendor hack that spurred the AJAX revolution, are two examples among many.