Thanks, appreciate the pointer - the idea of adopting something potentially a future standard through a polyfill is appealing. @pvg I take your point about lack of browser support, but that's what polyfills are for after all! :)
In the meantime since asking I also came across restful.js (github [1], blog [2]) - it's new, but looks like a good framework-neutral alternative, if a little heavy at 27K minimised/uncompressed.
Edit: Actually, fetch.js + es6-promise-min.js = 26K, so not much in it.
Fetch looks interesting but as far as I can tell, it's an in-progress standard with no support on any version of Safari or IE or any mobile browser whatsoever. Seems like it has a bit to go before it being 'native in modern browsers'
You can polyfill it in those browsers. Just use polyfill.io, or if you prefer, manually feature-detect it and if necessary load Github's fetch polyfill, which is good: https://github.com/github/fetch
