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A year long experiment project started around 2014 to understand how PolymerJS can shape the future of Frontend Development.

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PolymerJS (0.5) Interactive Banner (Demo - Desktop Only)

A year long experiment project started around 2014 to understand how PolymerJS can shape the future of Frontend Development.

CI/CD Cypress.io Dashboard DeepScan grade

Opportunities

  • Maximize usability of controls across many projects & Reduce duplicate Backend effort to integrate Frontend work.
  • Produce branded marketing campaigns to install on various available channels with a single line of code.
  • Reduce unnecessary complexity added into the projects due to animations or transitions to match the native mobile experience by Design Agencies.

Summary

PolymerJS was an admirable effort to demonstrate what the web's future may look like. However, it has proven to be challenging to keep up with the changes introduced by the PolymerJS team. Commercially, the lack of mobile support was a significant concern to use this library in the production applications.

Things I like during demos

Ease of Layout development

PolymerJS layout utilities makes modern layout fun & reduce mental pressure to come up with naming which do not add any business value. Under the hood, the library is using flex. Flex support is not great across devices, but I hope it will fix over time.

Animation

Library made hero transitions and micro interactions piece of cake.

Testing

Library provides good support for testing.

Accessibility

PolymerJS has excellent resources, examples and Accessible implementations.

Encapsulation & Re-usability

Yes, please!

Things I do not like during experimental projects

Resourcing & Steep Learning

It was a real challenge to find a technical resource who grasp the idea of components development. I have to be careful in what I say, as I do not have evidence to present, but in my humble opinion, the concept (e.g. Mixing/Behaviour) PolymerJS has offered are easy to start but hard to master. Since it is easy to write conditional expressions, I find myself wiring complex logic in attributes and struggle to make any sense of it later on.

Design Industry problem

The component building or design re-usability is not a technical problem (full stop). Currently, Responsive design is the most misused or undersold idea in the industry. We need to allow the industry to have more time to understand the constrain of digital designs. There is the necessity of better tooling for the design industry. Photoshop or Indesign are not the tools to build digital design (full stop).

Animation

As much as I love implementing animation, I struggle to see how the PolymerJS team will keep the promise of encapsulation. We can easily pollute Components with animation attributes that do not make sense independently but by looking at the whole application. Is it what we do not like, right?

Too Soon

I blame myself for buying into the beautiful future promised by the PolymerJS team. It is too soon; I have touched on the subject of the design industry earlier.
However, we have different problems. The biggest of them is the inconsistent browser engines implementation.