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Chapter 12: Polyfilling: Patching Old Br... > Introducing polyfills
Introducing polyfills
When you decorate your house, you find cracks or holes in walls and wooden surfaces that need to be filled so that the surface is level. To achieve this, you use a white filler paste that gives you a smooth, level surface upon which you can paint, hang wallpaper, or otherwise decorate.
This chapter introduces polyfilling, which is a way to fill the holes in browser support using JavaScript (or any appropriate technology such as Flash if it makes sense) to level the playing field.
We’ve seen that the HTML5 shiv allows new HTML5 elements to be styled in oldie. But what about all the exciting APIs we’ve introduced?
Note
Shivs vs Shims: Did Bruce & Remy mean “shiv”? Yes folks. The HTML5 shiv was coined by John Resig who later admitted (or realised) that he really meant shim, but the name stuck, so now it’s the HTML5 shiv. It’s a bit stabby, but it works.
