Our journey in switching to native Unicode emoji

This post details the technical challenges and solutions involved in migrating from image-based emoji to native Unicode emoji. It covers the implementation of a Unicode support detection mechanism using canvas rendering and localStorage caching, the creation of an npm package (`emoji-unicode-version`) to map emojis to Unicode versions, and workarounds for browser-specific rendering issues (e.g., IE11 canvas rendering, font stack issues). It also discusses emoji fallbacks using CSS sprites and the use of web components for dynamic element registration. Finally, it touches upon handling multi-character emoji like ZWJ sequences and skin tone modifiers.