With the 1.0 release of its Polymer library, Google is pushing for a method of building Web applications that leverages the development of interoperable custom elements.

Polymer 1.0 was unveiled during the Google I/O conference in San Francisco late last week. "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," Taylor Savage, Polymer product manager, said in a blog post. "The new library is about three times faster on Chrome, four times faster on Safari, and a third less code than in developer preview. And it's ready to be used in production applications."

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The library is built atop Web platform primitives via reusable Web components, which bring compose-ability, interoperability, and consume-ability to the Web platform, according to Google. It features a Web component framework for developing HTML design elements that can be used across mobile and desktop systems.

Updated and new features in version 1.0 include a data binding system; element themes and styling via custom CSS properties; fast, lightweight shadow DOM shim for nonsupporting browsers; and a Behaviors mechanism for sharing of behavior among elements. Along with version 1.0, Google unveiled a Polymer starter kit, featuring build tools and boilerplate for building Web apps via Polymer.

Google also is asking developers to look at the Polymer elements catalog. "There you can browse for elements to help create or add features to your Web app -- whether you need buttons or layouts, Google maps, or push notifications. For just about any problem you might need to solve on the Web, there's an element for that," Savage said.

Google recommends using the Bower package manager, which takes care of dependency management when building or consuming elements and deals with updating installed components, for installing the Polymer library.