Polyfill (programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 02:46, 7 March 2014

Latest revision as of 13:02, 2 April 2025

(134 intermediate revisions by 90 users not shown)

Line 1:

{{short description|Code to implement features in web browsers that do not support them}}

In [[web development]], a '''''polyfill''''' (or '''''polyfiller''''') is downloadable code which provides facilities that are not built into a web browser. A polyfill, or polyfiller, is a piece of code (or plugin) that provides the technology that you, the developer, expect the browser to provide '''''natively'''''. Flattening the API landscape if you will.For example, many features of [[HTML5]] are not supported by versions of [[Internet Explorer]] older than version 8 or 9, but can be used by web pages if those pages install a polyfill.<ref name=Sharp2010>{{cite web|last=Sharp|first=Remy|title=What is a polyfill?|url=http://remysharp.com/2010/10/08/what-is-a-polyfill/|accessdate=13 January 2012}}</ref> Web [[Shim_(computing)|shims]]<ref>[http://afarkas.github.com/webshim/demos/ Webshim]</ref> and [[HTML5 Shiv]]s are related concepts.

{{other uses|Polyfill (disambiguation)}}

In [[software development]], a '''polyfill''' is code that implements a new standard feature of a [[deployment environment]] within an old version of that environment that does not natively support the feature. Most often, it refers to [[JavaScript]] code that implements an [[HTML5]] or [[CSS]] [[web standard]], either an established standard (supported by some browsers) on older browsers, or a proposed standard (not supported by any browsers) on existing browsers. Polyfills are also used in [[PHP]] and [[Python (programming language)|Python]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Thormeier |first=Pascal |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yprEEAAAQBAJ&dq=polyfill+php&pg=PA195 |title=Mastering CSS Grid: A comprehensive and practical guide to creating beautiful layouts with CSS Grid |date=2023-06-09 |publisher=Packt Publishing Ltd |isbn=978-1-80461-616-1 |pages=195 |language=}}</ref>

==Description==

Polyfill-poly in Greek means many – in that there are many different ways to solve a specific problem, like say supporting the video element and fill means add up until full – until the full specification is available to us as developers. The intention with this “word” was to lay the seed and allow the web community to pick it up and see if it had legs. Turns out it did. We, as a community, wanted a word to hook our new [[HTML5 et al]] technologies on, and ultimately a polyfill is a better practise than a shim as it’s removable in the future without change to your own code.

Polyfills canallow alsoweb be useddevelopers to adduse entirelyan newAPI functionalityregardless toof browsers.whether Aor polyfillnot it is asupported shim forby a browser, APIand usually with minimal overhead. YouTypically typicallythey first check if a browser supports an API, and loaduse ait polyfillif available, otherwise using their own implementation.<ref name="speakingjs">{{cite book|title=Speaking JavaScript |url=http://speakingjs.com/ |author=Luis Ángel Pérez Castillo |year=2019}}</ref><ref>"It typically checks if a browser supports an API. If it doesn’t, the polyfill installs its own implementation. That allows you to use the API in either case."</ref> ForPolyfills themselves use instanceother, [[BrowserID]]more reliessupported onfeatures, aand [[Javascript]]thus [[Applicationdifferent Programmingpolyfills Interface|API]]may whichbe (asneeded offor mid-2012)different isbrowsers. notThe supportedterm inis anyalso browserused andas musta beverb: provided''polyfilling'' viais providing a polyfill for a feature.<ref>{{cite web

|title=navigator.id

|url=https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/navigator.id

|publisher=Mozilla Developer Network |date=30 Jun 2012}}</ref>

==Definition==

==Where ''polyfill'' came from?==

The term is a [[neologism]], coined by Remy Sharp, who required a word that meant "replicate an API using JavaScript (or Flash or whatever) if the browser doesn’t have it natively" while co-writing the book ''Introducing HTML5'' in 2009.<ref name="introducing276">{{cite book |title=Introducing HTML5 |author1=Bruce Lawson |author2=Remy Sharp |section=Introducing Polyfills |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=a8HQCk4pbQkC&pg=PA276 276–277]}}</ref><ref name="sharp2010">{{cite web |last=Sharp |first=Remy |title=What is a polyfill? |date=8 October 2010 |url=https://remysharp.com/2010/10/08/what-is-a-polyfill/ |access-date=13 January 2012}}</ref> Formally, "a shim is a [[Library (computing)|library]] that brings a new API to an older environment, using only the means of that environment."<ref name="speakingjs"/> Polyfills exactly fit this definition; the term ''shim'' was also used for early polyfills.<ref>{{cite web |quote=This piece of information makes building an HTML5 compatibility shim for IE7 far easier than had previously been assumed.|title=Mistakes, Sadness, Regret |url=https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1201080691&count=1 |author-link=Ian Hickson |author=Ian Hickson |date=2008-01-23}}</ref> However, to Sharp ''shim'' connoted non-transparent APIs and workarounds, such as [[spacer GIF]]s for layout, sometimes known as <code>shim.gif</code>, and similar terms such as ''[[progressive enhancement]]'' and ''[[graceful degradation]]'' were not appropriate, so he invented a new term.<ref name="sharp2010"/> The term is based on the [[spackling paste|multipurpose filling paste]] brand ''[[Spackling paste#Polyfilla|Polyfilla]],'' a paste used to cover up cracks and holes in walls, and the meaning "fill in holes (in functionality) in many ([[wikt:poly-|poly-]]) ways." The word has since gained popularity, particularly due to its use by [[Paul Irish]] and in [[Modernizr]] documentation.<ref name="sharp2010"/><ref>{{cite web |url=https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-browser-Polyfills |title=HTML5 Cross browser Polyfills |website=[[GitHub]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100928233437/http://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-browser-Polyfills |archive-date=2010-09-28}}</ref>

It was when Remy Spark was writing Introducing HTML5 back in 2009. He sat in a coffeeshop (as you do) thinking he wanted a word that meant “replicate an API using JavaScript (or Flash or whatever) if the browser doesn’t have it natively”.

The distinction that Sharp makes is:<ref name="introducing276"/>

Shim, to me, meant a piece of code that you could add that would fix some functionality, but it would most often have it’s own API. He wanted something you could drop in and it would silently work (remember the old ''shim.gif?'' that required you actually inserted the image to fix empty ''td'' cells – I wanted something that did that for me automatically).

{{blockquote|What makes a polyfill different from the techniques we have already, like a shim, is this: if you removed the polyfill script, your code would continue to work, without any changes required ''in spite of the polyfill being removed.''}}

This distinction is not drawn by other authors.<ref name="speakingjs"/> At times various other distinctions are drawn between shims, polyfills, and fallbacks, but there are no generally accepted distinctions: most consider polyfills a form of shim.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6599815/what-is-the-difference-between-a-shim-and-a-polyfill |title=What is the difference between a shim and a polyfill?}}</ref> The term ''polyfiller'' is also occasionally found.<ref>{{cite book|title=HTML5 Developer's Cookbook|author1=Chuck Hudson |author2=Tom Leadbetter |year=2011 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=No4hLcrmvw8C&dq=polyfiller&pg=PT121 121]}}</ref>

== Examples ==

He knew what he was not progressive enhancement because the baseline that he was working to required JavaScript and the latest technology. So that existing term didn’t work for him.

{{refimprove section |date=July 2023}}

=== core-js ===

He also knew that it wasn’t graceful degradation, because without the native functionality and without JavaScript (assuming your polyfill uses JavaScript), it wouldn’t work at all.

core-js<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/zloirock/core-js|title = Core-js|website = [[GitHub]]|date = 26 October 2021}}</ref> is one of the most popular<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.npmtrends.com/core-js-vs-core-js-pure-vs-es5-shim-vs-es6-shim-vs-airbnb-js-shims-vs-polyfill-library-vs-polyfill-service-vs-js-polyfills|title = Airbnb-js-shims vs core-js vs core-js-pure vs es5-shim vs es6-shim vs js-polyfills vs polyfill-library vs polyfill-service &#124; NPM trends}}</ref> JavaScript [[standard library]] polyfills. Includes polyfills for [[ECMAScript]] up to the latest version of the standard: promises, symbols, collections, iterators, typed arrays, many other features, ECMAScript proposals, some cross-platform [[WHATWG]] / [[W3C]] features and proposals like <code>URL</code>. You can load only required features or use it without global namespace pollution. It can be integrated with [[Babel (compiler)|Babel]], which allows it to automatically inject required core-js modules into your code.

===html5shiv===

So he wanted a word that was simple to say, and could conjure up a vague idea of what this thing would do. Polyfill just kind of came to him, but it fitted his requirements. Poly meaning it could be solved using any number of techniques – it wasn’t limited to just being done using JavaScript, and fill would fill the hole in the browser where the technology needed to be. It also didn’t imply “old browser” (because we need to polyfill new browser too).

In IE versions prior to 9, unknown HTML elements like {{tag|section|o}} and {{tag|nav|o}} would be parsed as empty elements, breaking the page's nesting structure and making those elements impossible to style using [[CSS]]. One of the most widely used polyfills, html5shiv,{{efn|The use of the term ''shiv'' here is a pun or mistake on ''shim.''<ref name="introducing276"/>}} exploits another quirk of IE to work around this bug: calling <code>document.createElement("tagname")</code> for each of the new HTML5 elements, which causes IE to parse them correctly. It also includes basic default styling for those HTML5 elements.

=== -prefix-free ===

Also for him, the product Polyfilla (spackling in the US) is a paste that can be put in to walls to cover cracks and holes. I really liked that idea of visualising how we’re fixing the browser. Once the wall is flat, you can paint as you please or wallpaper to your heart’s content.

Though most polyfills target out-of-date browsers, some exist to simply push modern browsers forward a little bit more. [[Lea Verou]]'s -prefix-free polyfill is such a polyfill, allowing current browsers to recognise the unprefixed versions of several CSS3 properties instead of requiring the developer to write out all the vendor prefixes. It reads the page's stylesheets and replaces any unprefixed properties with their prefixed counterparts recognised by the current browser.

=== Selectivizr ===

He had some feedback that the “word should be changed” but it’s more that the community at the time needed a word, like we needed [[Ajax]], [[HTML5]], [[Web 2.0]] – something to hang our ideas off. Regardless of whether the word is a perfect fit or not, it’s proven it has legs and developers and designers understand the concepts.

Keith Clark's Selectivizr is a popular polyfill that makes many CSS3 selectors work in IE 8 and below. It reads the page's stylesheets looking for a number of known CSS3 selectors, then uses a JavaScript selector library to query the document for elements matching those selectors, applying the styles directly to those elements. It supports several JavaScript selector libraries such as [[jQuery]].

=== Flexie ===

He intentionally never really pushed the term out there, he just dropped it in a few key places, and he thought it’s when +Paul Irish gave a presentation some months later, directly referencing the term polyfill, was when the term really got a large amount of exposure (He thought this was also helped with the addition of the [[Modernizr]] [[HTML5]] [[shim]](s) & ''polyfill'' page).

Possibly one of the most anticipated features of CSS3, Flexible Box Layout (a.k.a. Flexbox) promises to be an extremely powerful tool for laying out interface elements. [[WebKit]] and Mozilla engines have supported a preliminary draft syntax for years. Flexie implements support for that same syntax in IE and Opera. However, the draft spec has undergone a drastic revision to a new (and much more powerful) syntax, which is not yet supported by Flexie. Flexie can still be used along with the old syntax, but the developer must make sure they include the new syntax for future browsers as well.

=== CSS3 PIE ===

PIE ("Progressive Internet Explorer") implements some of the most popular missing CSS3 box decoration properties in IE, including border-radius and box-shadow for IE 8 and below, and linear-gradient backgrounds for IE 9 and below. Invoked as a HTC behavior (a proprietary IE feature), it looks for the unsupported CSS3 properties on specific elements and renders those properties using VML for IE 6–8 and SVG for IE 9. Its rendering is mostly indistinguishable from native browser implementations and it handles dynamic DOM modification well.

=== JSON 2 ===

[[Douglas Crockford]] originally wrote json2.js as an API for reading and writing his (then up-and-coming) [[JSON]] data format. It became so widely used that browser vendors decided to implement its API natively and turn it into a [[De facto standard|''de facto'' standard]]; Since json2.js now implements features native to newer browsers into older browsers, it has become a polyfill instead of a library.

=== es5-shim ===

ECMAScript 5th Edition ("ES5") brings some useful new scripting features, and since they're syntactically compatible with older JavaScript engines they can mostly be polyfilled by patching methods onto built-in JS objects. This es5-shim polyfill does it in two parts: es5-shim.js contains those methods that can be fully polyfilled, and es5-sham.js contains partial implementations of the other methods which rely too much on the underlying engine to work accurately.

=== FlashCanvas ===

FlashCanvas is an implementation of the HTML5 Canvas API using an [[Adobe Flash]] plug-in. A rare commercial polyfill, it comes in a paid version, as well as a free version, which lacks a few advanced features like shadows.

=== MediaElement.js ===

John Dyer's MediaElement.js polyfills support for <code><video></code> and <code><audio></code> elements, including the HTML5 MediaElement API, in older browsers using Flash or Silverlight plug-ins. It also provides an optional media player UI for those elements, which is consistent across all browsers.

=== Polyfill.io ===

A JavaScript library created by Andrew Betts that implemented Polyfill. In February 2024, the library's ___domain was acquired by China-based company Funnull and within a few months became part of a [[supply chain attack]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Goodin |first=Dan |date=2024-07-03 |title=384,000 sites pull code from sketchy code library recently bought by Chinese firm |url=https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/07/384000-sites-link-to-code-library-caught-performing-supply-chain-attack/ |access-date=2024-07-03 |website=[[Ars Technica]] |language=en-us}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Polyfill.io Attack Infects Over 110,000 Websites - Spiceworks |url=https://www.spiceworks.com/it-security/cyber-risk-management/news/polyfill-supply-chain-attack-infects-websites/ |access-date=2024-07-01 |website=Spiceworks Inc |language=en-US}}</ref>

=== BrowserID ===

{{Main articles|Mozilla Persona}}

[[Authentication protocol]] proposed by Mozilla, failed to gain traction.<ref>{{cite web | title = navigator.id | url = https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/navigator.id | publisher = Mozilla Developer Network | date = 30 June 2012 | access-date = 9 July 2012 | archive-date = 3 August 2012 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120803093440/https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/navigator.id | url-status = dead }}</ref>

=== Webshims Lib ===

Alexander Farkas's Webshims Lib aggregates many other polyfills together into a single package and conditionally loads only those needed by the visiting browser.

=== Hyphenopoly.js ===

Hyphenopoly.js enables [[Syllabification#Algorithm|automatic hyphenation]] if it is not already supported by the browser for the respective document language.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/mnater/Hyphenopoly|title = Hyphenopoly.js|website = [[GitHub]]|date = 25 September 2022}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Adapter pattern]]

* [[Shim (computing)]]

* [[Wrapper library]]

* [[Adaptive web design]]

* [[Backwards compatibility]]

==Notes==

{{Notelist}}

==References==

Line 30 ⟶ 73:

== External links ==

*[ {{cite web |url= https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-browser-Polyfills A|title= listList of polyfills] providing HTML5 facilities, from|___location= theGitHub |publisher= [[Modernizr]] project }}

* {{cite web |url= https://html5please.com/ |title= HTML5 Polyfill List by Feature |editor1-first= Divya |editor1-last= Manian |editor2-first= Paul |editor2-last= Irish |editor-link2= Paul Irish |editor3-first= Tim |editor3-last= Branyen |editor4-first= Connor |editor4-last= Montgomery |editor5-first= Arthur |editor5-last= Verschaeve |display-editors=etal |website= HTML5 Please |quote= The recommendations... represent the collective knowledge of developers who have been deep in the HTML5 trenches }}

*[http://html5please.com/ HTML5 Polyfill List By Feature]

*[http {{cite web |url= https://www.moreonfew.com/what-are-polyfills-in-javascript/ |title= What are PolyFills in Javascript?] |date= 5 September 2013 |website= More on Few }}

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2024}}

[[Category:Compatibility layers]]

[[Category:Web browsers]]

[[Category:Responsive_web_designResponsive web design]]

[[Category:Web design]]

[[Category:Web development]]