Today, a new developer who has started working with us has asked me what a Polyfill is and if it is the same as transpile the code, so to respond to this, I have encouraged myself to write this little article.

Some of the newest features sometimes aren’t available in all browsers. So, how can I use all these new features? Do I have to expect until they are implemented? And, what happens with old browsers?

The answer is NO. There are two main methods you can use to enable the newer JavaScript features in your browser: Polyfilling and Transpiling.

Polyfilling

The term “polyfill” is used to refer to taking the definition of a feature and provide an equivalent piece of code to give modern functionality on older browsers that do not natively support it.

For example, consider the following utility: Number.isNaN.

ES6 defines this utility to provide a better check than the original for NaN values. Still, if your browser does not support it (rare nowadays), you can easily create a polyfill for this utility and start using it regardless of whether your browser supports it or not.

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