

Extending the web - clintjhill
http://clint-hill.com/2012/12/03/extending-the-web/

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lewispollard
Maybe I haven't thought about this hard enough, but what's the distinction
between a prollyfill and a library?

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bkardell
A prollyfill is attached to a proposal/draft for new or improved native
features and it provides a way of changing the evolutionary model of the
Web...

Let me use the popularity of selector engines as an example: Only after a
giant swath of the community of developers decided that this was a useful
thing and even extended a few selectors did it get real consideration as
something that was needed natively - and at that point it really had no
draft/spec to it beyond: 'It matches CSS'. It didn't have use-cases or tests
or prose or anything --- So we got querySelectorAll, and really didn't match a
lot of expectations or needs - but it did 'match CSS'. Likewise, some things
in most of the selector engines proved to be kind of problematic if the idea
was to 'match CSS' - but since there was no draft and no one looking at that,
it just kind of slipped under the radar.

See if this helps at all:
[http://briankardell.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/w3c-extensible-...](http://briankardell.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/w3c-extensible-
web-community-group/)

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lewispollard
I think I get it - so by creating a polyfrill for a proposed native feature,
one can show the benefits of said feature in practice and push for its native
implementation?

