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Ask HN: Are you using new JavaScript / CSS features on any non-trivial web projects?

2 points by squid_ca ↗ HN
I am happy that JS and CSS are progressing, but I feel that most of the new features are literally years away from being usable "natively", ie, without polyfills / transpiling, due to browser inconsistencies / errors and legacy browser support. But rather than feel this way, I would love to be shown that I am wrong.

Are you using new features of JS / CSS in a non-trivial web app?

4 comments

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janesconference
Surely server-side: Node > 6 supports ES6 without transpilers. Since Node doesn't have to be browser-compatible, there is no reason to use older versions.

On the client side, I recently wrote a CMS for a big company based on CSS flexboxes (which are not polyfillable). I also wrote a number of browser projects using ES6 / ES7 features, but normally you demand transpiling and polyfilling to Babel, so you never know.

squid_ca
That's a good point - you can use these features browser-side if you can control the browser being used (like in a large company).
janesconference
Also, IMHO, if you're starting a project and you're not particularly constrained to stick with an older version of IE (or anything not-evergreen), you should target only the latest browsers. It's 2017 and evergreen browser are secure, free and stable on every OS. Older browser are a huge security risk and should be discouraged / not supported.
eat_brains
> Older browser are a huge security risk and should be discouraged / not supported.

I think Microsoft allows it's enterprise customers to buy support for older versions of IE.