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If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

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Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#31

Post by eropple »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #19
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #6

Because React is good enough. I think that's mostly why. Here's legacy React's like_button.js, without JSX, from their old documentation: 'use strict'; const e = React.createElement; class LikeButton extends React.Component { constructor(props) { super(props); this.state = { liked: false }; } render() { if (this.state.liked) { return 'You liked this.'; } return e( 'button', { onClick: () => this.setState({ liked: tru…

The latter doesn’t have any dependencies or a build step though right? That’s a big win that can be easily overlooked. But it depends what you’re optimising for…

I don't know many (any?) people who are greenfielding just-JavaScript, though. If you're using JavaScript in anger, you should probably be using TypeScript, and now you've got a build step regardless.

Which is not a bad thing. Incremental builds have gotten much better and much easier to deal with.

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#32

Post by dmix »

slibhb wrote: post #9

Web components fill an important niche: creating a library of components that can be easily used in react, angular, some other framework, no framework, or some framework that someone will invent next year. I expect their usage to increase over time.

Modern JS frameworks are heavily mixing mostly static with limited amounts of interactive components but all in one system. Where everything can still be the same component architecture, the same UI systems, same CSS/JS packages, same build systems, etc but you selectively choose which components (or small sections of a page) are interactive and require hydration.

I don't really see how Web components fill that picture as cleanly. You would basically still forced to choose between component overhead/custom code OR static HTML, creating a formal discintion rather than a boolean or flag or whatever. Why create that distinction just because it's "native" to the browser? The DOM is sufficient when your default is static and components are always SSR in the same DOM model.

It basically only makes sense if you're not building a "holistic" single frontend framework driven site and rather are mixing various server side view systems and occasionally adding a couple components.

Basically the sort of thing better suited for major legacy sites like Google rather than something you'd ever choose from the ground up.

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#33

Post by Rodeoclash »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #30
qbasic_forever wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web components are really only useful for stuff that's dynamic, like a sortable table that fetches data from an AJAX request. They require javascript and have no fallback or graceful degradation in functionality at all, which means using web components for all your bog standard buttons, text content, headers, etc. could be a very bad idea (not to mention it would trash the SEO and potentially accessibility of your si…

> we'd like to have a shared set visual components between them I think what gp wants is css!

Well, ideally css which belongs to the component that is using it. CSS modules and other encapsulation techniques have been pretty beneficial. I'd like to keep that going vs. trying to manage the "cascading" part of stylesheets over multiple sites.

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#34

Post by coldtea »

afavour wrote: post #29

IMO the main reason more people aren’t using Web Components is because React doesn’t support them. Preact does it just fine so I have to assume it’s possible but simply not in the interests of the React team. React feels like the enterprise lock-in of 2020s development: if you use it you’re using it top to bottom and it’s very difficult to mix and match with other frameworks. It’s a shame.

Nobody (meaning very few) care for Web Components, React or not.

Even in frameworks that do support them, they're just not widely used.

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#35

Post by tailspin2019 »

eropple wrote: post #31
tailspin2019 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter doesn’t have any dependencies or a build step though right? That’s a big win that can be easily overlooked. But it depends what you’re optimising for…

I don't know many (any?) people who are greenfielding just-JavaScript, though. If you're using JavaScript in anger, you should probably be using TypeScript, and now you've got a build step regardless. Which is not a bad thing. Incremental builds have gotten much better and much easier to deal with.

You now know one person who is doing this.

:)

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#36

Post by afavour »

coldtea wrote: post #34
afavour wrote: post #29

IMO the main reason more people aren’t using Web Components is because React doesn’t support them. Preact does it just fine so I have to assume it’s possible but simply not in the interests of the React team. React feels like the enterprise lock-in of 2020s development: if you use it you’re using it top to bottom and it’s very difficult to mix and match with other frameworks. It’s a shame.

Nobody (meaning very few) care for Web Components, React or not. Even in frameworks that do support them, they're just not widely used.

Web Components are just an API, a means to an end. You might as easily say nobody cares for document.createElement() but it’s still used by underlying code all the time.

If it were much easier to mix and match components that use different frameworks then people would be using web components whether they know it or not. But we’re in a React monoculture and React folks seem quite content with that.

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway14356 wrote: post #28
dxchester wrote: post #20

The main reason is that they're too low-level to use directly. They do a lot, but stop just short of being useful without something of a framework on top. I tried hard to use them directly, but found that it was untenable without sensible template interpolation, and without helpers for event binding. Here's my shot at the smallest possible "framework" atop Web Components that make them workable (and even enjoyable) a…

meanwhile Im like... 1

[deleted]

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#39

Post by coding123 »

afavour wrote: post #29

IMO the main reason more people aren’t using Web Components is because React doesn’t support them. Preact does it just fine so I have to assume it’s possible but simply not in the interests of the React team. React feels like the enterprise lock-in of 2020s development: if you use it you’re using it top to bottom and it’s very difficult to mix and match with other frameworks. It’s a shame.

I personally think more people aren't using WC because React simply exists. I know that sounds controversial, but it isn't.

https://2022.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/

Re: If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?

#40

Post by jagged-chisel »

throwaway14356 wrote: post #28
dxchester wrote: post #20

The main reason is that they're too low-level to use directly. They do a lot, but stop just short of being useful without something of a framework on top. I tried hard to use them directly, but found that it was untenable without sensible template interpolation, and without helpers for event binding. Here's my shot at the smallest possible "framework" atop Web Components that make them workable (and even enjoyable) a…

meanwhile Im like... 1

GP comment shows a simple example, sure. And obviously it’s overkill just to implement incrementing a displayed value. But trivializing the example doesn’t reduce the “framework” to being pointless.
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