20 ms·

Please consider not adopting Google WebComponents

440 points by XzetaU8 7y ago

throwaway77384 7y ago
I mean, with the dawn of webassembly, I feel as though things are going to get closed off more and more. We've had this with flash and java applets too. Ultimately I hope an open internet will prevail. Otherwise we will not be able to archive things effectively. Don't get me started on accessibility also. While I'll happily jump on the let's-bash-google-train, is there any effort to do the same thing in a non-scoped way? I feel a set of 'web-components' would in fact be a super useful thing to have for everyone. Why does it have to be google-chrome / whatever-specific and locked down?
- timw4mail 7y ago
  Google essentially has the same role Microsoft did at the height of the browser wars...majority market share and lazy developers. So new shiny things tend to be Chrome-only. Webcomponents exist as a loose set of standards that are marginally cross-browser, but Google has the biggest/most popular framework using web components.
  - lima 7y ago
    The big difference is that Google is building well-specified new web standards which are quickly adopted by other browser vendors, rather than adding a heap of poor proprietary browser extensions that become de-facto standards. They even deprecated Chrome Apps in favor of the PWA standard. Google has nothing to gain from hurting the open web ecosystem.
    - throwaway77384 7y ago
      "Google has nothing to gain from hurting the open web ecosystem." I really want to believe this. But how does AMP fit into this? I feel it is quite counter to the idea of an open web. Please do not take this as an attack or criticism, I would like to, in fact, learn some better arguments in favour of why Google would support, rather than suppress an open web ecosystem.
      - eropple 7y ago
        From the perspective of a service connecting eyeballs with the thing they're looking for (and some ads along the way), AMP is a relatively anodyne amplification on top of caching strategies. "Hey, build good, easily parsed and managed pages and we'll make everything Way Way Faster" is the argument. To be clear, I'm not saying that it is necessarily representative of reality, but that's the idea.
        throwaway77384 7y ago
        Interesting. It would appear I have been downvoted by someone for asking a question, which is a strange thing to do. Anyway, I thank you for your comment. I now feel I understand the matter / intent behind AMP a little better.
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        AMP is a federated web alternative to closed apps and ecosystems like Apple News and FB Instant Articles. It's a specification built using existing web standards that allows anybody to build FB IA or Apple News without integrating directly with publishers.
      - themacguffinman 7y ago
        Depends on what you mean by "an open web". If you consider "an open web" to be a publicly accessible network of documents and applications, it's practically absurd to suggest that Google - a company that makes almost all of its money from services that need to crawl everything it can find on the public internet - might want to hurt this. The more websites and applications that join the open web ecosystem and open themselves to public crawling and searching, the better it is for Google. Walled gardens like Apple News and Facebook Instant actually run counter to this open web. They can't be publicly indexed or crawled or searched, yet they have the valuable advantage of being really fast. I see AMP as an aggressive optimization designed to bring web performance up to par with native platforms like Apple News and Facebook Instant. When a publisher chooses AMP instead of exclusively using those closed platforms, it's a win for the open web when their content uses web standards (AMP is merely a strict subset of web standards) accessible by anyone, not just Apple or Facebook users. I think nowadays "the open web ecosystem" has come to mean something different in discussions like this, closer in meaning to "the distributed web" or "a less corporate web". Google obviously doesn't care for that.
    - admax88q 7y ago
      That's true, however the new standards are often poorly designed and require Google level resources to keep up with the pace of change. They've basically ensured that another Netscape/Chrome cannot happen, they've pushed the complexity of the web so quickly that only the biggest most well funded companies can afford to keep up.
      - true_religion 7y ago
        Browsers are now about as complicated as operating systems were in the 1980s. It’s not impossible to create a new one, but it’s certainly not low hanging fruit anymore.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      They're building some, but also killing others, like the aforementioned <style scoped>.
  - IAmEveryone 7y ago
    This is such a common misconception... Internet Explorer was terrible because they would drop some binary blob (ActiveX, Flash Player) into the interpreter. And those binaries were neither standardised, nor cross-platform, nor OSS. None of that is true for Chrome. Google's additions tend be useful, which is why "too fast" and "bloated" is the only (generic and subjective) criticism people can come up with. With Safari on Mac and especially iOS, Google also doesn't quite own the same position that MS did. Nor do they have any incentives to harm other browsers: their competitors are Facebook and iOS native apps, i. e. the walled gardens that can't be crawled and searched.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      There were far more issues with IE than just ActiveX and Flash (especially since Flash was also available for all other browsers). It was the difference in how it handled HTML/CSS/JS, compared to other browsers, that was the biggest pain point by far.
    - timw4mail 7y ago
      ActiveX was never as big an issue as weird CSS rendering and JScript weirdness. Even VBScript was a minimal issue. In some ways, it's for the best that Microsoft basically stopped development in the days of IE6, as it didn't lead to the exponential feature bloat that has been the case the last few years.
- lima 7y ago
  > I mean, with the dawn of webassembly, I feel as though things are going to get closed off more and more. This is already possible today - many Qt applications, for example, compile to WebAssembly with minimal changes required. Look at this nice Qt rich text editor demo, rendered in a canvas: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wasm-qt-examples/last/index.html https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wasm-qt-examples/last/ind... Even copy&paste works! But except for use cases like porting existing niche enterprise applications, I don't see why anyone would prefer this over standard web development. Performance is worse, it's very slow compared to the DOM, accessibility is nil, it requires arcane tooling and the ecosystem is so much smaller.
  - chrismorgan 7y ago
    And that the very simplest examples have to download 12MB of code before they can do anything. (OK, so it’s probably more like a 4.5MB download. Still waaay bigger than you should require for most purposes.) And you don’t seem to be able to enter astral plane characters at all (though that’s just an implementation bug that they haven’t dealt with yet, and shouldn’t be a fundamental problem of the approach). And controls are all wonky and non-native in look or feel. And keyboard control slips badly in many places so that you lose your place within the window easily. Recompiling desktop apps to the web (and specifically Qt, but also excluding games, which live somewhat in a space of their own) is very niche.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- dfabulich 7y ago
  > is there any effort to do the same thing in a non-scoped way? It's already done! Web Components (Custom Elements + Shadow DOM) are web standards, ratified by W3C, and they already work great in Firefox and Safari. This whole article is simply incorrect. http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/ http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/ https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/shadow/ https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/shadow/ https://www.webcomponents.org/ https://www.webcomponents.org/ see "Browser Support"
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    They... don't work great. They cannot be serialized, they break accessibility, they break screen readers (AFAIR), they are not lazy loaded, they do not participate in form events, they...
    - dfabulich 7y ago
      They require JS, which is definitely a drawback. But they work fine in screen readers, (you can screw this up with JS, just like any other HTML) and they "participate" in form events just like other HTML. Since they require JS, you can lazy load them if you want (it's just JS).
      - dmitriid 7y ago
        I don't know the state of it today, but even in summer last year custom components with Shadow DOM were still excluded from Form Submission. Form-associated custom elements proposal was enabled in Chrome, no idea if Safari or Firefox went and implemented it, too. Shadow DOM also throws off accessibility IIRC if aria-labeledby and similar cross shadow dom boundaries [1] but I do agree they should be largely accessible to assistive technologies. You can't truly lazy-load them. See Rich Harris' (author of Svelte) take on Web Components [2] And these two articles by a Web Components proponent listing the many issues they still have [3] [1] See for example this tweet https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1198069119897047041 https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1198069119897047041 [2] https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2ci... [3] https://dev.to/webpadawan/beyond-the-polyfills-how-web-components-affect-us-today-3j0a https://dev.to/webpadawan/beyond-the-polyfills-how-web-compo... and https://dev.to/webpadawan/the-journey-of-web-components-wrong-ways-lacking-parts-and-promising-paths-1d5a https://dev.to/webpadawan/the-journey-of-web-components-wron...
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  Web Assembly changes nothing to the issues described in the post. Web Assembly still relies on WebAPI in the browser.
- pas 7y ago
  It doesn't work that way. Technology almost always can be used for more than one purpose. WebAssembly will grow the web a lot. Sure, it might replace some existing parts, but that's not because WebAssembly is "evil" or "closed", but because some publishers/sites/folks want to go into that direction. They are probably already doing a lot of "closed" stuff. DRM? IP restriction? Continuous connection checking or the site stops working? Idiotic session timer? Restricting registration to certain users for no real legal reason at all? Obfuscated HTTP API? The list goes on. Worrying about dumb technology is irrelevant. (If you want to worry about tech, worry about AI, that has the potential to really cause problems.)
- dathinab 7y ago
  WebAssembly is not more closed of as normal minnified JavaScript. Sure you could combine WebAssembly with some DRM thinks to close it off. But so can you do for normal JavaScript. At the same time WebAssembly does open the web for more programming languages, more programs/use-cases (due to more close to hardware performance). Lastly WebAssembly turned out to be very usefull for having a standartized cross platform, cross architecture sand-boxing system. I.e. what Java tried but failed to do.
gildas 7y ago
To play devil's advocate, note that Google is trying to propose something to make the shadow root contents deserializable without relying on JavaScript [1][2]. [1] https://github.com/mfreed7/declarative-shadow-dom/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/mfreed7/declarative-shadow-dom/blob/maste... [2] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/nJDc-1s3R9U/uCJKsEqpAwAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-d...
- Blackthorn 7y ago
  I hope [1] takes off, that's a nice enhancement idea.
pjmlp 7y ago
I used to be big into XHTML, but that ship has long sailed. Also if Web Development is now becoming a synonym to "ChromeOS", Chrome did not reach that state magically, rather thanks to the crowd that kept bashing IE and FF thorough the last decade.
- Ygg2 7y ago
  > I used to be big into XHTML I know :( > rather thanks to the crowd that kept bashing IE and FF thorough the last decade. I like FF, but that's too simplified. Chrome was preinstalled on a bunch of devices (namely Android) and heavily advertised (through Google). Firefox and even IE is having an uphill battle fighting that kind of power. What governments need to do is do to Google what they did to Microsoft. Lawsuit, hefty fine and mandatory choose your own browser. Although, I doubt even that would help.
  - ori_b 7y ago
    Chrome needs to be split from Google.
    - Tyr42 7y ago
      How would it pay for developers then?
      - Ygg2 7y ago
        Like other ever other commercial browser?
        Tyr42 7y ago
        What do you mean by commercial browsers? Edge is backed by MS, Safari by Apple, so they are out. Firefox is a backed by a foundation, a not for profit. Brave is on top of chrome, and open source. I guess the old Opera browser ran ads in the browser and was a commercial browser. And did people pay for netscape navigator?
void445be54d48a 7y ago
As a web developer for over 15 years, I can safely say that bad decisions will continue to be made. Such as, CSS-in-JS. Expect the worst. And it's not completely Google's fault although they should never have bothered to invent WebComponents, this sort of thing comes from the hubris of CTOs and technical leads who are the ones pushing these various technologies, and the acolytes who desire these positions following suit. Believe it or not, some people like to use certain tech to satisfy their own personal itches and not because the tech is actually demonstrably better.
tdumitrescu 7y ago
What a weird polemic. "With Google WebComponents here we mean the use of CustomElements and Shadow DOM, especially when used in combination, and in dynamically created document structures (e.g. using module loading/unloading and/or slotted elements). ... WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures that cannot be saved, archived or even displayed outside of the designated targeted browsers (primarily Google Chrome)." It's a web API. Browsers implement it. Including Safari and FF. If the argument is that it's hard to implement and makes it harder for new browser implementations, the same could be said of new CSS features, other APIs like Web Audio, etc. Trying to brand Web Components as Google-only may have worked in the v0 prototype days in like 2014, but it's factually not the case today.
- eropple 7y ago
  It's a web API, but it's a web API that requires development work to do, and Goanna (Pale Moon's pre-multiprocess, pre-all-the-things-that-make-modern-Firefox-good Gecko fork) would need to implement those APIs.
  - PunchTornado 7y ago
    the same can be said about any new CSS features and other new stuff that goes into the browser. browsers are evolving rapidly, either to make devs work easier or make users' work easier or just to make everything prettier or faster.
  - lima 7y ago
    Just ran checksec on Pale Moon's Linux binary distribution - their binaries are built with no mitigations whatsoever. ASLR disabled, no stack canaries, no fortify. This whole project appears to be a security disaster and nobody should use it.
    - q3k 7y ago
      They're generally pretty unprofessional. https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86 https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
FpUser 7y ago
Google is trying substitute the OS with their browser. The rest is accordingly to this goal. They'll be exposing more and more of underlying OS functionality on one hand and turning Chrome to be a fully fledged IDE as well. Web and at some point traditional app developers will play along as well since having one platform to develop for is very attractive idea. Web components is just on of many other steps towards this goal. So yes I'm afraid that at some point we will all end up being servants of Google. Hopefully something will prevent this from happening.
mavsman 7y ago
Interesting points here, especially about `<style scoped>` being removed from browsers after Google requested it. That would be really handy to use. https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/552 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/552
- oefrha 7y ago
  I (a mere dabbler in web stuff) for one liked <style scoped>, but saying it was killed because Google alone refused to implement it is disingenuous. Just look at https://caniuse.com/#feat=style-scoped https://caniuse.com/#feat=style-scoped And here, style scoped experiment in Chromium in 2012: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2012/03/A-New-Experimental-Feature-style-scoped https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2012/03/A-New-Expe...
  - smnthermes 7y ago
    But even Mozilla is having problems implementing it. Bugzilla has more than 100 open bugs about WebComponents.
aasasd 7y ago
Ironically, that very page handles link clicks with JS without bubbling back to the browser, so since my browser is set to forbid opening new tabs on a webcoder's whim, I also can't cmd-click links on that page to open a new tab when I want it. And the page does open new tabs on simple clicks if it's allowed in the browser. Such simplicity and accessibility, wow. I also have no idea from that post what particular problems the authors see with WebComponents and Shadow DOM and why those would be Chrome-only.
superkuh 7y ago
The motivations (and problems) of mega-corps rarely align with the motivations (and problems) of human persons and it's always a mistake for everyone to copy their practices blindly. You have to decide what you want the web to be. An opaque application or a document. Using the tools of applications for documents is pretty stupid even if it is hip and looks good on a resume. There are two webs. There's the money web run by coporate persons and then there's the web run by human persons. If you're being paid you don't really have a choice and that sucks. But if you do have a choice, please please, consider what Moonchild is asking here.
Blackthorn 7y ago
I don't get it. The ability to source some js and then add a <custom-element> wherever you want just like it was a built in element is one of the best things to ever happen to web design. This is what we should have had ten years ago, not the post-jquery framework madness we have now. I do think it was dumb that <style scoped> got removed though.
- gildas 7y ago
  Is it okay for you if you save a webpage but no contents are saved in fact? Do the test and save in HTML (with the native "Save as" feature) this page [1]. The saved page will be almost empty because it's made of web components. This is an example of issue that should be fixed. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list Edit: This might be fixed, see my first post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604632
  - Blackthorn 7y ago
    I don't see how this is a fundamental failure of web components and not an implementation issue of the completely ignored and disregarded save feature.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Are you sure that's why? It seems possible that the issue is how the data is being loaded. How did you confirm that web components are the issue with loading that page from a saved file?
    - gildas 7y ago
      Yes I'm sure. It was a bug in SingleFile [1] and to fix it (I'm the author), I must add a JavaScript script in the saved page to deserialize the shadow root contents that are missing. It means that JS is required to view this saved page correctly. [1] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile
cryptica 7y ago
>> WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures That ship sailed a very long time ago. WebComponents is dead simple compared to React, TypeScript, WebPack and all the complex tooling which developers are essentially forced to use these days due to a lack of alternatives.
- SickOfSlowSites 7y ago
  > forced to use these days due to a lack of alternatives. The alternatives were barebones HTML, CSS, and javascript. They were forced, in 2013, by Google who used their monopoly search position to enforce 'responsive' design (i.e. frameworks) otherwise your page got delisted. This company is ripe for anti-trust.
bugmen0t 7y ago
Given they are based on a fork of Mozilla's Gecko engine I think the real reason behind this post is that their inability to cherry-pick Web Components from Gecko. It's likely the compatibility cost is making the browser unusable on many websites which is rendering their browser useless over time.
TeffenEllis 7y ago
Disclosure: I maintain an open source web component library. This is a strange take on what I think the author is fighting against: a less open web platform. What confuses me is how the adoption of Web Components will somehow make things worse than they already are. Take a look at any contemporary web framework and you'll see there's little overlap in compatibility or portability -- sometimes even between versions of the same library! I've seen first hand how difficult web components can be, but they're still a better solution than trusting the foundations of the web to the teams at Angular or React. In my opinion we need an API that lets young developers start their web apps with plain HTML/CSS/JS without experiencing into the same decades-old issues that created frameworks in the first place. How should an intermediate developer beging organizing their CSS? Or importing helpful libraries? Or even something as simple as making a reusable HTML template without spending any time in Webpack? The truth is that we don't have easy answers for these aspiring developers, and we won't get any sympathy from them by demanding the web return to it's document roots. I think Web Components can solve all these issues with some guidance from the community. The platform is ready and so are we.
- throwaway77384 7y ago
  I am inclined to agree with this comment indeed. Having had to learn a lot about these things recently (and trying to stay away from frameworks), it is quite difficult to not feel 'boxed in' by the rules imposed by React, Vue, etc. I feel as though one is encouraged to learn a framework instead of the basics. Having learned the basics, I can now see why there are frameworks, and what their uses are, but often I wonder whether people decide to do something in [x] framework to make their work sound cool, before even knowing what it is they are building.
- t0f3rchr15 7y ago
  I absolutely agree. Not only can Web Components simplify web development and lower the barrier to entry, they can also bridge the gap between frameworks and the modern modular web. As a developer who works in an enterprise environment, frameworks like React and Angular are our boon and bane. Beyond the advertised features, they are amazing at providing repeatable patterns for developers and offer structure to large and small projects alike. And in my experience, they have proven to be significantly smaller, more performant, and more maintainable than the vanilla JS apps that were being delivered to clients previously. Also, it is because of legacy browsers that we still need all the features these libraries and frameworks provide. Many of our clients are just now moving away from IE 10 and 11, and tools like these have kept us all sane. So we take the cost of learning frameworks, bundling through webpack, and being tied into proprietary ecosystems, because the trade off is worth it to us when our focus is delivering value to the business and functionality to our customers. Enter Web Components. Trying to maintain branding, coherent styles, accessibility, and a cohesive user experience across an entire enterprise can be a huge undertaking. Common component libraries help, but the multiple frameworks used throughout a company can result in duplicated and triplicated work. Web Components offer us the promise of creating these assets once and including them in any application we build, regardless of framework. And since they are spec compliant and framework agnostic, changing to a new framework--or no framework--in the future doesn't have the added cost of rewriting every component to match the new lib/framework API. To address some other comments here, it's worth discussing who controls the specs, and what's the right path for the future of the web, but we still have to develop for the world we live in today.
newsletterguy 7y ago
Interesting topic about possible death of Pale Moon because of that specification and their inability to adopt it: https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_palemoon_is_going_to_die_most_likely/ https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_... Who knows the Palemoon team realizes pretty fast that when the developer is writing something like that here - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004 that it has the meaning that they can't move forward or have serious issues in attempting to do so. Google-Web-components... The next BIG thing in web development which is used in Youtube and other big pages will be most likely Palemoons undoing. Without it - no more videos on Youtube! Media and business sites are no longer loaded and can't be used properly, buttons can't be pressed anymore so pages are partly or fully broken! This is what more and more pages adopt, as it is the NEXT BIG THING! The Palemoon team failed in the past to implement highly complex features and the only solution so far was in the end to adopt fresh engines from Mozilla on a regular base, something which is NO LONGER POSSIBLE as future Firefox engines have not the features the Palemoon team sees as vital! Get slowly ready to start the search for a new browser to which you can switch in the near future - the best and most logical time in doing so is NOW! Additionally - regarding this whole topic: https://freenode.logbot.info/binaryoutcast/20200314 https://freenode.logbot.info/binaryoutcast/20200314 WHY it most likely will die... While we all should be grateful for Gaming4JC and his attempts to bring over some code lately - Google Web components is TOO BIG - Seamonkey guys don't have it inside their new new 2.53 - which is based on Firefox 56. Waterfox - using the same code - also has issues. And if it is already problematic with Firefox 56 based code... how big is the chance to succeed with Firefox 52 based code? With the help of only one skilled guy? My suggestion is try as much as other possible browsers now to make the switch when it is forced on you as less annoying as possible.
- IAmEveryone 7y ago
  > Google-Web-components... The next BIG thing in web development which is used in YouTube... > ...failed in the past to implement highly complex features... This must the most toxic web community I've seen in a while. I basically agree with this troll but they still sound like some imposter failing miserably at faking confidence and competence. (Or, you know, the current leader of the free world).
at-fates-hands 7y ago
In case someone else has no idea what Palemoon is: Pale Moon is an open-source web browser with an emphasis on customizability; its motto is "Your browser, Your way". There are official releases for Microsoft Windows and Linux, an unofficial build for Mac OS, and contributed builds for various platforms. Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox with substantial divergence. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/
luckydata 7y ago
to be dismissed without even a bare minimum of consideration. Palemoon is a waste of time and it makes me sad there's people out there thinking otherwise.
smacktoward 7y ago
Some context that could possibly make the reasoning behind this more clear. Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox. The purpose of the fork was to retain support for various legacy technologies that mainline Firefox was abandoning, such as NPAPI plugins, XUL/XPCOM, and old-style themes. If keeping up support for those old technologies and keeping up with the latest improvements in Firefox sounds like a lot of work for a small team to tackle, that's because it is. As a result, Pale Moon doesn't include all the performance improvements that shipped with Firefox Quantum, along with various other "modern Firefox" improvements like not running all tabs in a single process. (Pale Moon last rebased itself on mainline Firefox circa Firefox 52, which shipped three years ago.) My suspicion is that, when Pale Moon asks you not to use Web Components, they're doing so because their engine is old, it doesn't have the necessary muscle to deal with things like shadow DOM in a performant fashion, and they don't have the resources necessary to give it that muscle. They could rebase onto a newer version of Firefox that did have that muscle, but they'd lose support for all the legacy technologies they forked away to keep in the first place; and re-implementing all those APIs on their own would be just as prohibitively large a project as tuning up their engine on their own would be. So, in the absence of some huge population of skilled developers volunteering to pitch in for free, their project is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.
- Hokusai 7y ago
  Other way of looking at it is that google is the new Microsoft and play the Embrace, extend, and extinguish game. You are attacking the post ad hominem. But, your comment does not change the validity original argument. I’m interested in knowing your opinion about the arguments, thou.
- AnarchistNode7 7y ago
  Well, if I as developer would realize that i pose my users under certain risk and i am unable to do anything about it, then the only logical and morally correct option would be, to tell that my users and cease operation. Everything else is selfish and delusional!
  - smacktoward 7y ago
ernsheong 7y ago
Please, it's not "Google Web Components", just "Web Components". Web components has pretty decent support in Safari and Firefox. But of course, the real problem is that that is just about the full list isn't it, not considering other Chromium-based ones, and nobody really wants to reinvent the wheel.
2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago
(aside: I haven't seen a PHPBB forum in aggges! Amazing to know they're still going)
DannyB2 7y ago
WebComponents might make sense for complex Applications as opposed to web sites. Not everything done on the web is a "web site". Or blog. There are untold numbers of Boring Business Applications that make the world go around. (like it or not...) These applications are increasingly built to run in web browsers. (not necessarily over the public internet) These types of applications may be large and complex. They might have hundreds of forms, thousands of reports, etc. Web Components, and other various web technologies might be great for this type of use. This isn't a web site where you want to "save" a "page". The application isn't organized as "pages". The browser is more like a remote smart terminal with a rich set of technologies available. Next time you check out a library book, or a nurse draws your blood for lab work, or you get your oil changed, look at the application they are using. Is it running in a web browser?
- floatboth 7y ago
  They're also great for blogs too. Remember how everyone was adding stuff like lightboxes to their pages with jQuery Plugins? Well now that kind of thing is much cleaner and doesn't require writing a line of JS.
nailer 7y ago
To fix the overly long lines: document.querySelector('.content').style['max-width'] = '650px'
- aembleton 7y ago
  Or toggle reader view in your browser
gambler 7y ago
By some strange coincidence maintaining a working web browser became a task that only Google can do "properly". Microsoft gave up. Firefox is struggling. Doing something from scratch is insanity. So here we are. A website choke-full of people who constantly post about modulariy, protocols and advanced type systems, yet sheepishly accept that a browser with its zillion unrelated features is a giant, tightly coupled blob that cannot be tackled by anyone except an ubercorp like Google.
- salamander014 7y ago
  Web browsers became what operating systems were 20 years ago.
  - AgentME 7y ago
    But with great security sandboxing by default, with multiple interoperable open-source implementations, built on open standards, and cross-platform and not bound to any specific machine architecture. Imagine downloading dozens of different unsandboxed apps every single day on a classic operating system. You'd get so many viruses (and just broken software that breaks or slows down your system) doing that. But now we can do that safely in browsers with (web) apps. That's amazing.
    - jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
      > But with great security sandboxing by default, with multiple interoperable open-source implementations, built on open standards, and cross-platform and not bound to any specific machine architecture. All that applies to operating systems and has been like that for decades. > You'd get so many viruses (and just broken software that breaks or slows down your system) doing that. That is simply false, and if you can prove it, there is recognition/money waiting for you. > But now we can do that safely in browsers with (web) apps. No, bugs are still a thing the same way they are for operating systems.
      - untog 7y ago
throw_m239339 7y ago
All that drama would not have happened with XHTML 2.0 spec which solved many of the problems WebComponents tries to solve (in a worse way). And don't get me started on ES4 vs Typescript. A lot of energy wasted for things that could have been solved once and for all 10 years ago, but were not because browser vendors and big web corporations favored the sloppiness of the status quo back then.
arxpoetica 7y ago
There are plenty of reasons to not like web components: https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2ci...
zzo38computer 7y ago
Some features of the Web Components are stuff I thought should be available to the end user only, not for the web developer. This includes shadow DOM, and some of my own ideas such as "privileged CSS" and "meta-CSS" (including the ability to set more fine priorities). I also thought of the <widget> element, which provides better backward compatibility (it acts like a <span> if it is not recognized), better user customization, faster loading, and potentially ability to work even if JavaScripts (and WebAssembly) are disabled or are implemented at all. This would be better than Google WebComponents, I think. (I also don't like that they removed <blink> but did not remove <marquee>; I don't want <marquee>, but I do want <blink>, which I have done with userChrome.css, which also allows me to program the blink rate, is good.)
AnarchistNode7 7y ago
Oh my... some of the Pale Moon cult feels offended and call us leftwing Nazis.. how pathetic! https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_palemoon_is_going_to_die_most_likely/fkre662/ https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_...
s_m 7y ago
People are already not adopting Web Components ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
JohnFen 7y ago
Sites that use WebComponents are sites that I will be unable to use. Not that whether or not I can use a site matters to web devs, of course.
no_wizard 7y ago
I know this seems like its a silly question, but why are they calling it _Google_ web components? Aren't web components now apart of the main spec via W3C acceptance?
FCKMozNazis 7y ago
This Moz-Nazi shit-party is so non-surprising! Mozilla-new has turned into a fully anti-customization/choice and anti-politically-moderates and conservatives hating "progressive/leftist developer” – as that would (at least also theoretically) appeal to the majority of Google Chrome users - which have because of their ideology and believe much less tolerance and understanding for everything which provides choice - and everything which is more conservative aligned. Mozilla-new has fully turned into a sell-out company which just betrayed their own creation and origin user-base as it was not compatible with “leftist/progressive visions/ideas” and their more limited/restricting/intolerant world-view! Mozilla is supporting a clear discriminating concept - which is while nicely wrapped as "inclusive and socially correct" fully excluding a minority who also has rights - the group of users who are sitting in the already mentioned middle-ground/moderate-conservative-ground and do not like that everything gets intentionally dumbed-down or removed to put everything out of the way for a clear intolerant and aggressive/dismissive user group - which Mozilla wants on board. And that is in the end the ultimate dirty reason why people and software which are sticking out from the crowd do get so much despised and demonized - or even receiving threats (Classic add-on archive) or monitored and even the smallest mistake is recorded and used in time to blacklist the projects or people which refuse to play the established and discriminating game of today.
FckMoz 7y ago
Oh, how that minority harassment and bashing here is so typical of Mozilla's extremist-users-news... Mozilla-new has turned into a fully anti-customization/choice and anti-politically-moderates and conservatives hating "progressive/leftist developer” – as that would (at least also theoretically) appeal to the majority of Google Chrome users - which have because of their ideology and believe much less tolerance and understanding for everything which provides choice - and everything which is more conservative aligned. Mozilla-new has fully turned into a sell-out company which just betrayed their own creation and origin user-base as it was not compatible with “leftist/progressive visions/ideas” and their more limited/restricting/intolerant world-view! Mozilla is supporting a clear discriminating concept - which is while nicely wrapped as "inclusive and socially correct" fully excluding a minority who also has rights - the group of users who are sitting in the already mentioned middle-ground/moderate-conservative-ground and do not like that everything gets intentionally dumbed-down or removed to put everything out of the way for a clear intolerant and aggressive/dismissive user group - which Mozilla wants on board. And that is in the end the ultimate dirty reason why people and software which are sticking out from the crowd do get so much despised and demonized - or even receiving threats (Classic add-on archive) or monitored and even the smallest mistake is recorded and used in time to blacklist the projects or people which refuse to play the established and discriminating game of today.

440 points by XzetaU8 7y ago

I mean, with the dawn of webassembly, I feel as though things are going to get closed off more and more. We've had this with flash and java applets too. Ultimately I hope an open internet will prevail. Otherwise we will not be able to archive things effectively. Don't get me started on accessibility also. While I'll happily jump on the let's-bash-google-train, is there any effort to do the same thing in a non-scoped way? I feel a set of 'web-components' would in fact be a super useful thing to have for everyone. Why does it have to be google-chrome / whatever-specific and locked down?

timw4mail 7y ago
Google essentially has the same role Microsoft did at the height of the browser wars...majority market share and lazy developers. So new shiny things tend to be Chrome-only. Webcomponents exist as a loose set of standards that are marginally cross-browser, but Google has the biggest/most popular framework using web components.
- lima 7y ago
  The big difference is that Google is building well-specified new web standards which are quickly adopted by other browser vendors, rather than adding a heap of poor proprietary browser extensions that become de-facto standards. They even deprecated Chrome Apps in favor of the PWA standard. Google has nothing to gain from hurting the open web ecosystem.
  - throwaway77384 7y ago
    "Google has nothing to gain from hurting the open web ecosystem." I really want to believe this. But how does AMP fit into this? I feel it is quite counter to the idea of an open web. Please do not take this as an attack or criticism, I would like to, in fact, learn some better arguments in favour of why Google would support, rather than suppress an open web ecosystem.
    - eropple 7y ago
      From the perspective of a service connecting eyeballs with the thing they're looking for (and some ads along the way), AMP is a relatively anodyne amplification on top of caching strategies. "Hey, build good, easily parsed and managed pages and we'll make everything Way Way Faster" is the argument. To be clear, I'm not saying that it is necessarily representative of reality, but that's the idea.
      - throwaway77384 7y ago
        Interesting. It would appear I have been downvoted by someone for asking a question, which is a strange thing to do. Anyway, I thank you for your comment. I now feel I understand the matter / intent behind AMP a little better.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      AMP is a federated web alternative to closed apps and ecosystems like Apple News and FB Instant Articles. It's a specification built using existing web standards that allows anybody to build FB IA or Apple News without integrating directly with publishers.
    - themacguffinman 7y ago
      Depends on what you mean by "an open web". If you consider "an open web" to be a publicly accessible network of documents and applications, it's practically absurd to suggest that Google - a company that makes almost all of its money from services that need to crawl everything it can find on the public internet - might want to hurt this. The more websites and applications that join the open web ecosystem and open themselves to public crawling and searching, the better it is for Google. Walled gardens like Apple News and Facebook Instant actually run counter to this open web. They can't be publicly indexed or crawled or searched, yet they have the valuable advantage of being really fast. I see AMP as an aggressive optimization designed to bring web performance up to par with native platforms like Apple News and Facebook Instant. When a publisher chooses AMP instead of exclusively using those closed platforms, it's a win for the open web when their content uses web standards (AMP is merely a strict subset of web standards) accessible by anyone, not just Apple or Facebook users. I think nowadays "the open web ecosystem" has come to mean something different in discussions like this, closer in meaning to "the distributed web" or "a less corporate web". Google obviously doesn't care for that.
  - admax88q 7y ago
    That's true, however the new standards are often poorly designed and require Google level resources to keep up with the pace of change. They've basically ensured that another Netscape/Chrome cannot happen, they've pushed the complexity of the web so quickly that only the biggest most well funded companies can afford to keep up.
    - true_religion 7y ago
      Browsers are now about as complicated as operating systems were in the 1980s. It’s not impossible to create a new one, but it’s certainly not low hanging fruit anymore.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    They're building some, but also killing others, like the aforementioned <style scoped>.
- IAmEveryone 7y ago
  This is such a common misconception... Internet Explorer was terrible because they would drop some binary blob (ActiveX, Flash Player) into the interpreter. And those binaries were neither standardised, nor cross-platform, nor OSS. None of that is true for Chrome. Google's additions tend be useful, which is why "too fast" and "bloated" is the only (generic and subjective) criticism people can come up with. With Safari on Mac and especially iOS, Google also doesn't quite own the same position that MS did. Nor do they have any incentives to harm other browsers: their competitors are Facebook and iOS native apps, i. e. the walled gardens that can't be crawled and searched.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    There were far more issues with IE than just ActiveX and Flash (especially since Flash was also available for all other browsers). It was the difference in how it handled HTML/CSS/JS, compared to other browsers, that was the biggest pain point by far.
  - timw4mail 7y ago
    ActiveX was never as big an issue as weird CSS rendering and JScript weirdness. Even VBScript was a minimal issue. In some ways, it's for the best that Microsoft basically stopped development in the days of IE6, as it didn't lead to the exponential feature bloat that has been the case the last few years.
lima 7y ago
> I mean, with the dawn of webassembly, I feel as though things are going to get closed off more and more. This is already possible today - many Qt applications, for example, compile to WebAssembly with minimal changes required. Look at this nice Qt rich text editor demo, rendered in a canvas: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wasm-qt-examples/last/index.html https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wasm-qt-examples/last/ind... Even copy&paste works! But except for use cases like porting existing niche enterprise applications, I don't see why anyone would prefer this over standard web development. Performance is worse, it's very slow compared to the DOM, accessibility is nil, it requires arcane tooling and the ecosystem is so much smaller.
- chrismorgan 7y ago
  And that the very simplest examples have to download 12MB of code before they can do anything. (OK, so it’s probably more like a 4.5MB download. Still waaay bigger than you should require for most purposes.) And you don’t seem to be able to enter astral plane characters at all (though that’s just an implementation bug that they haven’t dealt with yet, and shouldn’t be a fundamental problem of the approach). And controls are all wonky and non-native in look or feel. And keyboard control slips badly in many places so that you lose your place within the window easily. Recompiling desktop apps to the web (and specifically Qt, but also excluding games, which live somewhat in a space of their own) is very niche.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
dfabulich 7y ago
> is there any effort to do the same thing in a non-scoped way? It's already done! Web Components (Custom Elements + Shadow DOM) are web standards, ratified by W3C, and they already work great in Firefox and Safari. This whole article is simply incorrect. http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/ http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/ https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/shadow/ https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/shadow/ https://www.webcomponents.org/ https://www.webcomponents.org/ see "Browser Support"
- dmitriid 7y ago
  They... don't work great. They cannot be serialized, they break accessibility, they break screen readers (AFAIR), they are not lazy loaded, they do not participate in form events, they...
  - dfabulich 7y ago
    They require JS, which is definitely a drawback. But they work fine in screen readers, (you can screw this up with JS, just like any other HTML) and they "participate" in form events just like other HTML. Since they require JS, you can lazy load them if you want (it's just JS).
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      I don't know the state of it today, but even in summer last year custom components with Shadow DOM were still excluded from Form Submission. Form-associated custom elements proposal was enabled in Chrome, no idea if Safari or Firefox went and implemented it, too. Shadow DOM also throws off accessibility IIRC if aria-labeledby and similar cross shadow dom boundaries [1] but I do agree they should be largely accessible to assistive technologies. You can't truly lazy-load them. See Rich Harris' (author of Svelte) take on Web Components [2] And these two articles by a Web Components proponent listing the many issues they still have [3] [1] See for example this tweet https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1198069119897047041 https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1198069119897047041 [2] https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2ci... [3] https://dev.to/webpadawan/beyond-the-polyfills-how-web-components-affect-us-today-3j0a https://dev.to/webpadawan/beyond-the-polyfills-how-web-compo... and https://dev.to/webpadawan/the-journey-of-web-components-wrong-ways-lacking-parts-and-promising-paths-1d5a https://dev.to/webpadawan/the-journey-of-web-components-wron...
throw_m239339 7y ago
Web Assembly changes nothing to the issues described in the post. Web Assembly still relies on WebAPI in the browser.
pas 7y ago
It doesn't work that way. Technology almost always can be used for more than one purpose. WebAssembly will grow the web a lot. Sure, it might replace some existing parts, but that's not because WebAssembly is "evil" or "closed", but because some publishers/sites/folks want to go into that direction. They are probably already doing a lot of "closed" stuff. DRM? IP restriction? Continuous connection checking or the site stops working? Idiotic session timer? Restricting registration to certain users for no real legal reason at all? Obfuscated HTTP API? The list goes on. Worrying about dumb technology is irrelevant. (If you want to worry about tech, worry about AI, that has the potential to really cause problems.)
dathinab 7y ago
WebAssembly is not more closed of as normal minnified JavaScript. Sure you could combine WebAssembly with some DRM thinks to close it off. But so can you do for normal JavaScript. At the same time WebAssembly does open the web for more programming languages, more programs/use-cases (due to more close to hardware performance). Lastly WebAssembly turned out to be very usefull for having a standartized cross platform, cross architecture sand-boxing system. I.e. what Java tried but failed to do.

gildas 7y ago

To play devil's advocate, note that Google is trying to propose something to make the shadow root contents deserializable without relying on JavaScript [1][2]. [1] https://github.com/mfreed7/declarative-shadow-dom/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/mfreed7/declarative-shadow-dom/blob/maste... [2] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/nJDc-1s3R9U/uCJKsEqpAwAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-d...

Blackthorn 7y ago
I hope [1] takes off, that's a nice enhancement idea.

pjmlp 7y ago

I used to be big into XHTML, but that ship has long sailed. Also if Web Development is now becoming a synonym to "ChromeOS", Chrome did not reach that state magically, rather thanks to the crowd that kept bashing IE and FF thorough the last decade.

Ygg2 7y ago
> I used to be big into XHTML I know :( > rather thanks to the crowd that kept bashing IE and FF thorough the last decade. I like FF, but that's too simplified. Chrome was preinstalled on a bunch of devices (namely Android) and heavily advertised (through Google). Firefox and even IE is having an uphill battle fighting that kind of power. What governments need to do is do to Google what they did to Microsoft. Lawsuit, hefty fine and mandatory choose your own browser. Although, I doubt even that would help.
- ori_b 7y ago
  Chrome needs to be split from Google.
  - Tyr42 7y ago
    How would it pay for developers then?
    - Ygg2 7y ago
      Like other ever other commercial browser?
      - Tyr42 7y ago
        What do you mean by commercial browsers? Edge is backed by MS, Safari by Apple, so they are out. Firefox is a backed by a foundation, a not for profit. Brave is on top of chrome, and open source. I guess the old Opera browser ran ads in the browser and was a commercial browser. And did people pay for netscape navigator?

void445be54d48a 7y ago

As a web developer for over 15 years, I can safely say that bad decisions will continue to be made. Such as, CSS-in-JS. Expect the worst. And it's not completely Google's fault although they should never have bothered to invent WebComponents, this sort of thing comes from the hubris of CTOs and technical leads who are the ones pushing these various technologies, and the acolytes who desire these positions following suit. Believe it or not, some people like to use certain tech to satisfy their own personal itches and not because the tech is actually demonstrably better.

tdumitrescu 7y ago

What a weird polemic. "With Google WebComponents here we mean the use of CustomElements and Shadow DOM, especially when used in combination, and in dynamically created document structures (e.g. using module loading/unloading and/or slotted elements). ... WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures that cannot be saved, archived or even displayed outside of the designated targeted browsers (primarily Google Chrome)." It's a web API. Browsers implement it. Including Safari and FF. If the argument is that it's hard to implement and makes it harder for new browser implementations, the same could be said of new CSS features, other APIs like Web Audio, etc. Trying to brand Web Components as Google-only may have worked in the v0 prototype days in like 2014, but it's factually not the case today.

eropple 7y ago
It's a web API, but it's a web API that requires development work to do, and Goanna (Pale Moon's pre-multiprocess, pre-all-the-things-that-make-modern-Firefox-good Gecko fork) would need to implement those APIs.
- PunchTornado 7y ago
  the same can be said about any new CSS features and other new stuff that goes into the browser. browsers are evolving rapidly, either to make devs work easier or make users' work easier or just to make everything prettier or faster.
- lima 7y ago
  Just ran checksec on Pale Moon's Linux binary distribution - their binaries are built with no mitigations whatsoever. ASLR disabled, no stack canaries, no fortify. This whole project appears to be a security disaster and nobody should use it.
  - q3k 7y ago
    They're generally pretty unprofessional. https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86 https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86

FpUser 7y ago

Google is trying substitute the OS with their browser. The rest is accordingly to this goal. They'll be exposing more and more of underlying OS functionality on one hand and turning Chrome to be a fully fledged IDE as well. Web and at some point traditional app developers will play along as well since having one platform to develop for is very attractive idea. Web components is just on of many other steps towards this goal. So yes I'm afraid that at some point we will all end up being servants of Google. Hopefully something will prevent this from happening.

mavsman 7y ago

Interesting points here, especially about `<style scoped>` being removed from browsers after Google requested it. That would be really handy to use. https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/552 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/552

oefrha 7y ago
I (a mere dabbler in web stuff) for one liked <style scoped>, but saying it was killed because Google alone refused to implement it is disingenuous. Just look at https://caniuse.com/#feat=style-scoped https://caniuse.com/#feat=style-scoped And here, style scoped experiment in Chromium in 2012: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2012/03/A-New-Experimental-Feature-style-scoped https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2012/03/A-New-Expe...
- smnthermes 7y ago
  But even Mozilla is having problems implementing it. Bugzilla has more than 100 open bugs about WebComponents.

aasasd 7y ago

Ironically, that very page handles link clicks with JS without bubbling back to the browser, so since my browser is set to forbid opening new tabs on a webcoder's whim, I also can't cmd-click links on that page to open a new tab when I want it. And the page does open new tabs on simple clicks if it's allowed in the browser. Such simplicity and accessibility, wow. I also have no idea from that post what particular problems the authors see with WebComponents and Shadow DOM and why those would be Chrome-only.

superkuh 7y ago

The motivations (and problems) of mega-corps rarely align with the motivations (and problems) of human persons and it's always a mistake for everyone to copy their practices blindly. You have to decide what you want the web to be. An opaque application or a document. Using the tools of applications for documents is pretty stupid even if it is hip and looks good on a resume. There are two webs. There's the money web run by coporate persons and then there's the web run by human persons. If you're being paid you don't really have a choice and that sucks. But if you do have a choice, please please, consider what Moonchild is asking here.

Blackthorn 7y ago

I don't get it. The ability to source some js and then add a <custom-element> wherever you want just like it was a built in element is one of the best things to ever happen to web design. This is what we should have had ten years ago, not the post-jquery framework madness we have now. I do think it was dumb that <style scoped> got removed though.

gildas 7y ago
Is it okay for you if you save a webpage but no contents are saved in fact? Do the test and save in HTML (with the native "Save as" feature) this page [1]. The saved page will be almost empty because it's made of web components. This is an example of issue that should be fixed. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list Edit: This might be fixed, see my first post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22604632
- Blackthorn 7y ago
  I don't see how this is a fundamental failure of web components and not an implementation issue of the completely ignored and disregarded save feature.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  Are you sure that's why? It seems possible that the issue is how the data is being loaded. How did you confirm that web components are the issue with loading that page from a saved file?
  - gildas 7y ago
    Yes I'm sure. It was a bug in SingleFile [1] and to fix it (I'm the author), I must add a JavaScript script in the saved page to deserialize the shadow root contents that are missing. It means that JS is required to view this saved page correctly. [1] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

cryptica 7y ago

>> WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures That ship sailed a very long time ago. WebComponents is dead simple compared to React, TypeScript, WebPack and all the complex tooling which developers are essentially forced to use these days due to a lack of alternatives.

SickOfSlowSites 7y ago
> forced to use these days due to a lack of alternatives. The alternatives were barebones HTML, CSS, and javascript. They were forced, in 2013, by Google who used their monopoly search position to enforce 'responsive' design (i.e. frameworks) otherwise your page got delisted. This company is ripe for anti-trust.

bugmen0t 7y ago

Given they are based on a fork of Mozilla's Gecko engine I think the real reason behind this post is that their inability to cherry-pick Web Components from Gecko. It's likely the compatibility cost is making the browser unusable on many websites which is rendering their browser useless over time.

TeffenEllis 7y ago

Disclosure: I maintain an open source web component library. This is a strange take on what I think the author is fighting against: a less open web platform. What confuses me is how the adoption of Web Components will somehow make things worse than they already are. Take a look at any contemporary web framework and you'll see there's little overlap in compatibility or portability -- sometimes even between versions of the same library! I've seen first hand how difficult web components can be, but they're still a better solution than trusting the foundations of the web to the teams at Angular or React. In my opinion we need an API that lets young developers start their web apps with plain HTML/CSS/JS without experiencing into the same decades-old issues that created frameworks in the first place. How should an intermediate developer beging organizing their CSS? Or importing helpful libraries? Or even something as simple as making a reusable HTML template without spending any time in Webpack? The truth is that we don't have easy answers for these aspiring developers, and we won't get any sympathy from them by demanding the web return to it's document roots. I think Web Components can solve all these issues with some guidance from the community. The platform is ready and so are we.

throwaway77384 7y ago
I am inclined to agree with this comment indeed. Having had to learn a lot about these things recently (and trying to stay away from frameworks), it is quite difficult to not feel 'boxed in' by the rules imposed by React, Vue, etc. I feel as though one is encouraged to learn a framework instead of the basics. Having learned the basics, I can now see why there are frameworks, and what their uses are, but often I wonder whether people decide to do something in [x] framework to make their work sound cool, before even knowing what it is they are building.
t0f3rchr15 7y ago
I absolutely agree. Not only can Web Components simplify web development and lower the barrier to entry, they can also bridge the gap between frameworks and the modern modular web. As a developer who works in an enterprise environment, frameworks like React and Angular are our boon and bane. Beyond the advertised features, they are amazing at providing repeatable patterns for developers and offer structure to large and small projects alike. And in my experience, they have proven to be significantly smaller, more performant, and more maintainable than the vanilla JS apps that were being delivered to clients previously. Also, it is because of legacy browsers that we still need all the features these libraries and frameworks provide. Many of our clients are just now moving away from IE 10 and 11, and tools like these have kept us all sane. So we take the cost of learning frameworks, bundling through webpack, and being tied into proprietary ecosystems, because the trade off is worth it to us when our focus is delivering value to the business and functionality to our customers. Enter Web Components. Trying to maintain branding, coherent styles, accessibility, and a cohesive user experience across an entire enterprise can be a huge undertaking. Common component libraries help, but the multiple frameworks used throughout a company can result in duplicated and triplicated work. Web Components offer us the promise of creating these assets once and including them in any application we build, regardless of framework. And since they are spec compliant and framework agnostic, changing to a new framework--or no framework--in the future doesn't have the added cost of rewriting every component to match the new lib/framework API. To address some other comments here, it's worth discussing who controls the specs, and what's the right path for the future of the web, but we still have to develop for the world we live in today.

newsletterguy 7y ago

Interesting topic about possible death of Pale Moon because of that specification and their inability to adopt it: https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_palemoon_is_going_to_die_most_likely/ https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_... Who knows the Palemoon team realizes pretty fast that when the developer is writing something like that here - https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24004 that it has the meaning that they can't move forward or have serious issues in attempting to do so. Google-Web-components... The next BIG thing in web development which is used in Youtube and other big pages will be most likely Palemoons undoing. Without it - no more videos on Youtube! Media and business sites are no longer loaded and can't be used properly, buttons can't be pressed anymore so pages are partly or fully broken! This is what more and more pages adopt, as it is the NEXT BIG THING! The Palemoon team failed in the past to implement highly complex features and the only solution so far was in the end to adopt fresh engines from Mozilla on a regular base, something which is NO LONGER POSSIBLE as future Firefox engines have not the features the Palemoon team sees as vital! Get slowly ready to start the search for a new browser to which you can switch in the near future - the best and most logical time in doing so is NOW! Additionally - regarding this whole topic: https://freenode.logbot.info/binaryoutcast/20200314 https://freenode.logbot.info/binaryoutcast/20200314 WHY it most likely will die... While we all should be grateful for Gaming4JC and his attempts to bring over some code lately - Google Web components is TOO BIG - Seamonkey guys don't have it inside their new new 2.53 - which is based on Firefox 56. Waterfox - using the same code - also has issues. And if it is already problematic with Firefox 56 based code... how big is the chance to succeed with Firefox 52 based code? With the help of only one skilled guy? My suggestion is try as much as other possible browsers now to make the switch when it is forced on you as less annoying as possible.

IAmEveryone 7y ago
> Google-Web-components... The next BIG thing in web development which is used in YouTube... > ...failed in the past to implement highly complex features... This must the most toxic web community I've seen in a while. I basically agree with this troll but they still sound like some imposter failing miserably at faking confidence and competence. (Or, you know, the current leader of the free world).

at-fates-hands 7y ago

In case someone else has no idea what Palemoon is: Pale Moon is an open-source web browser with an emphasis on customizability; its motto is "Your browser, Your way". There are official releases for Microsoft Windows and Linux, an unofficial build for Mac OS, and contributed builds for various platforms. Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox with substantial divergence. https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/

luckydata 7y ago

to be dismissed without even a bare minimum of consideration. Palemoon is a waste of time and it makes me sad there's people out there thinking otherwise.

smacktoward 7y ago

Some context that could possibly make the reasoning behind this more clear. Pale Moon is a fork of Firefox. The purpose of the fork was to retain support for various legacy technologies that mainline Firefox was abandoning, such as NPAPI plugins, XUL/XPCOM, and old-style themes. If keeping up support for those old technologies and keeping up with the latest improvements in Firefox sounds like a lot of work for a small team to tackle, that's because it is. As a result, Pale Moon doesn't include all the performance improvements that shipped with Firefox Quantum, along with various other "modern Firefox" improvements like not running all tabs in a single process. (Pale Moon last rebased itself on mainline Firefox circa Firefox 52, which shipped three years ago.) My suspicion is that, when Pale Moon asks you not to use Web Components, they're doing so because their engine is old, it doesn't have the necessary muscle to deal with things like shadow DOM in a performant fashion, and they don't have the resources necessary to give it that muscle. They could rebase onto a newer version of Firefox that did have that muscle, but they'd lose support for all the legacy technologies they forked away to keep in the first place; and re-implementing all those APIs on their own would be just as prohibitively large a project as tuning up their engine on their own would be. So, in the absence of some huge population of skilled developers volunteering to pitch in for free, their project is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Hokusai 7y ago
Other way of looking at it is that google is the new Microsoft and play the Embrace, extend, and extinguish game. You are attacking the post ad hominem. But, your comment does not change the validity original argument. I’m interested in knowing your opinion about the arguments, thou.
AnarchistNode7 7y ago
Well, if I as developer would realize that i pose my users under certain risk and i am unable to do anything about it, then the only logical and morally correct option would be, to tell that my users and cease operation. Everything else is selfish and delusional!
- smacktoward 7y ago

ernsheong 7y ago

Please, it's not "Google Web Components", just "Web Components". Web components has pretty decent support in Safari and Firefox. But of course, the real problem is that that is just about the full list isn't it, not considering other Chromium-based ones, and nobody really wants to reinvent the wheel.

2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago

(aside: I haven't seen a PHPBB forum in aggges! Amazing to know they're still going)

DannyB2 7y ago

WebComponents might make sense for complex Applications as opposed to web sites. Not everything done on the web is a "web site". Or blog. There are untold numbers of Boring Business Applications that make the world go around. (like it or not...) These applications are increasingly built to run in web browsers. (not necessarily over the public internet) These types of applications may be large and complex. They might have hundreds of forms, thousands of reports, etc. Web Components, and other various web technologies might be great for this type of use. This isn't a web site where you want to "save" a "page". The application isn't organized as "pages". The browser is more like a remote smart terminal with a rich set of technologies available. Next time you check out a library book, or a nurse draws your blood for lab work, or you get your oil changed, look at the application they are using. Is it running in a web browser?

floatboth 7y ago
They're also great for blogs too. Remember how everyone was adding stuff like lightboxes to their pages with jQuery Plugins? Well now that kind of thing is much cleaner and doesn't require writing a line of JS.

nailer 7y ago

To fix the overly long lines: document.querySelector('.content').style['max-width'] = '650px'

aembleton 7y ago
Or toggle reader view in your browser

gambler 7y ago

By some strange coincidence maintaining a working web browser became a task that only Google can do "properly". Microsoft gave up. Firefox is struggling. Doing something from scratch is insanity. So here we are. A website choke-full of people who constantly post about modulariy, protocols and advanced type systems, yet sheepishly accept that a browser with its zillion unrelated features is a giant, tightly coupled blob that cannot be tackled by anyone except an ubercorp like Google.

salamander014 7y ago
Web browsers became what operating systems were 20 years ago.
- AgentME 7y ago
  But with great security sandboxing by default, with multiple interoperable open-source implementations, built on open standards, and cross-platform and not bound to any specific machine architecture. Imagine downloading dozens of different unsandboxed apps every single day on a classic operating system. You'd get so many viruses (and just broken software that breaks or slows down your system) doing that. But now we can do that safely in browsers with (web) apps. That's amazing.
  - jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
    > But with great security sandboxing by default, with multiple interoperable open-source implementations, built on open standards, and cross-platform and not bound to any specific machine architecture. All that applies to operating systems and has been like that for decades. > You'd get so many viruses (and just broken software that breaks or slows down your system) doing that. That is simply false, and if you can prove it, there is recognition/money waiting for you. > But now we can do that safely in browsers with (web) apps. No, bugs are still a thing the same way they are for operating systems.
    - untog 7y ago

throw_m239339 7y ago

All that drama would not have happened with XHTML 2.0 spec which solved many of the problems WebComponents tries to solve (in a worse way). And don't get me started on ES4 vs Typescript. A lot of energy wasted for things that could have been solved once and for all 10 years ago, but were not because browser vendors and big web corporations favored the sloppiness of the status quo back then.

arxpoetica 7y ago

There are plenty of reasons to not like web components: https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2ci...

zzo38computer 7y ago

Some features of the Web Components are stuff I thought should be available to the end user only, not for the web developer. This includes shadow DOM, and some of my own ideas such as "privileged CSS" and "meta-CSS" (including the ability to set more fine priorities). I also thought of the <widget> element, which provides better backward compatibility (it acts like a <span> if it is not recognized), better user customization, faster loading, and potentially ability to work even if JavaScripts (and WebAssembly) are disabled or are implemented at all. This would be better than Google WebComponents, I think. (I also don't like that they removed <blink> but did not remove <marquee>; I don't want <marquee>, but I do want <blink>, which I have done with userChrome.css, which also allows me to program the blink rate, is good.)

AnarchistNode7 7y ago

Oh my... some of the Pale Moon cult feels offended and call us leftwing Nazis.. how pathetic! https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_palemoon_is_going_to_die_most_likely/fkre662/ https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comments/fk4fnl/attention_...

s_m 7y ago

People are already not adopting Web Components ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

JohnFen 7y ago

Sites that use WebComponents are sites that I will be unable to use. Not that whether or not I can use a site matters to web devs, of course.

no_wizard 7y ago

I know this seems like its a silly question, but why are they calling it _Google_ web components? Aren't web components now apart of the main spec via W3C acceptance?

FCKMozNazis 7y ago

This Moz-Nazi shit-party is so non-surprising! Mozilla-new has turned into a fully anti-customization/choice and anti-politically-moderates and conservatives hating "progressive/leftist developer” – as that would (at least also theoretically) appeal to the majority of Google Chrome users - which have because of their ideology and believe much less tolerance and understanding for everything which provides choice - and everything which is more conservative aligned. Mozilla-new has fully turned into a sell-out company which just betrayed their own creation and origin user-base as it was not compatible with “leftist/progressive visions/ideas” and their more limited/restricting/intolerant world-view! Mozilla is supporting a clear discriminating concept - which is while nicely wrapped as "inclusive and socially correct" fully excluding a minority who also has rights - the group of users who are sitting in the already mentioned middle-ground/moderate-conservative-ground and do not like that everything gets intentionally dumbed-down or removed to put everything out of the way for a clear intolerant and aggressive/dismissive user group - which Mozilla wants on board. And that is in the end the ultimate dirty reason why people and software which are sticking out from the crowd do get so much despised and demonized - or even receiving threats (Classic add-on archive) or monitored and even the smallest mistake is recorded and used in time to blacklist the projects or people which refuse to play the established and discriminating game of today.

FckMoz 7y ago

Oh, how that minority harassment and bashing here is so typical of Mozilla's extremist-users-news... Mozilla-new has turned into a fully anti-customization/choice and anti-politically-moderates and conservatives hating "progressive/leftist developer” – as that would (at least also theoretically) appeal to the majority of Google Chrome users - which have because of their ideology and believe much less tolerance and understanding for everything which provides choice - and everything which is more conservative aligned. Mozilla-new has fully turned into a sell-out company which just betrayed their own creation and origin user-base as it was not compatible with “leftist/progressive visions/ideas” and their more limited/restricting/intolerant world-view! Mozilla is supporting a clear discriminating concept - which is while nicely wrapped as "inclusive and socially correct" fully excluding a minority who also has rights - the group of users who are sitting in the already mentioned middle-ground/moderate-conservative-ground and do not like that everything gets intentionally dumbed-down or removed to put everything out of the way for a clear intolerant and aggressive/dismissive user group - which Mozilla wants on board. And that is in the end the ultimate dirty reason why people and software which are sticking out from the crowd do get so much despised and demonized - or even receiving threats (Classic add-on archive) or monitored and even the smallest mistake is recorded and used in time to blacklist the projects or people which refuse to play the established and discriminating game of today.