Core: Consistently use local reference to access()

Ref 3b53b75160606610cc8f87404f89fc9e10441c4b
Closes gh-1605
Readme: Fix punctuation in tile

Closes gh-1607
Ajax: Remove workaround for IE6/7

Closes gh-1597
Ref #8138
Build: drop bower; use npm for front-end deps

Fixes #15186
Closes gh-1620
Build: update front-end dependencies
Build: update node dependencies barring jscs
Build: update grunt-jscs-checker and pass with the new rules
Build: update source map options for the new grunt jshint
CSS: elements are hidden when either offsetWidth or offsetHeight is zero

- Note: this is a breaking change that has been delayed for several versions.

Fixes #10406
Fixes #13132