Google has released Version 1.0 of the Polymer library which makes it easy to create interoperable custom elements and create app-like experiences on the web. 

Polymer provides a set of features for creating custom elements. These features are designed to make it easier and faster to make custom elements that work like standard DOM elements. In principle you can do the job just with the W3C Web Components standards but Polymer makes it easier and provides polyfils and shims to allow thing to work on a wide range of browsers. The new release comes with a catalog of predefined components presented as a set of elements:

• Iron  - utility elements including generic UI elements (such as icons, input and layout components), as well as non-UI elements providing features like AJAX, signaling and storage.

• Paper - UI elements that implement material design.

• Gold - Form elements for ecommerce.

• Neon - Animation-related elements.

• Platinum - Elements for app-like features, like push notifications and offline caching. 

The periodic table like approach isn't an optional marketing extra - the component all have names that start with an element. For example, the collapsible block component is called iron-collapse, which sounds a bit worrying. You use it by embedding a tag in your HTML:

<iron-collapse id="collapse">
  <div>Content goes here...</div>
</iron-collapse>

Of course the tag is replaced by the HTML and code of the web component when Polymer processes the page. 

Polymer has  been used extensively by Google since it was first announced - for example it is used for many of the UI elements in the Chrome Dev Editor - and now it is production ready. It is also significantly updated from its previous versions. 

In the release announcement, Polymer's Product Manager, Taylor Savage explains:

Since the “Developer Preview” release, we’ve re-written the library from the ground up, focusing on cross-browser performance while keeping the developer-friendly ergonomics. The new library is about 3x faster on Chrome, 4x faster on Safari, and a third less code than in developer preview.

Major new and updated features in Polymer 1.0 include:

• Fast and easy-to-use data binding system
  
  
• Element theming and styling using custom CSS properties
  
  
• Fast and lightweight Shadow DOM shim for non-supporting browsers
  
  
• “Behaviors” mechanism for sharing behavior between elements

There is also a Polymer Starter Kit with  ready-to-use boilerplate, and an end-to-end toolchain to use from development through production deployment.  

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