3 ms·

Shadow DOM is not "bleeding edge". It's been in all major browsers for years.

Already__Taken 3y ago
shadow don't has always been on the platform the only new big but is an API exposing it. before you just never got to change certain components like select dropdowns
chrismorgan 3y ago
Shadow DOM is frankly more bleeding edge than most new things, in the sense that you’ll cut yourself badly if you try using it much. There are just so many subtle and annoying problems with it because it broke the DOM model that has been around from the start, and now a bunch of stuff is just inaccessible from the DOM. The vast majority of places I see people thinking “Shadow DOM might be suitable here”, it’s a terrible idea. Good places to use it are actually really niche. Declarative Shadow DOM, more recently added and not yet universally supported, fixes one of the two biggest problems with it (that you have to load and run scripts before it can work), but the other one (that it’s strong insulating encapsulation, which is just occasionally what you want but normally not) is by design and is not going to change. In the forms they’ve ended up in, Shadow DOM was a mistake (yes, they should have just left browser widgets like <select> and <audio controls> special), and Web Components were almost certainly a mistake.
- colordrops 3y ago
  I've been using shadow DOM almost exclusively for 7 years in very high profile important applications with no incident due to its use. If your code is properly encapsulated you won't have a problem. There shouldn't be any reason for other production components to pierce the shadow DOM boundary.
  - chrismorgan 3y ago
    Since you talk from this angle, here’s an example from a different perspective of how this is still a problem (though I maintain it’s almost always a terrible idea for development/maintenance reasons where people think to use it, too—few components actually want what Shadow DOM gets them): I’m a user. I want to write user scripts to tweak things to my liking and to support my specific use cases. If you use shadow roots (especially closed ones), you may fundamentally prevent me from doing so, removing the agency of my user agent. I don’t like that.

shadow don't has always been on the platform the only new big but is an API exposing it. before you just never got to change certain components like select dropdowns

chrismorgan 3y ago

Shadow DOM is frankly more bleeding edge than most new things, in the sense that you’ll cut yourself badly if you try using it much. There are just so many subtle and annoying problems with it because it broke the DOM model that has been around from the start, and now a bunch of stuff is just inaccessible from the DOM. The vast majority of places I see people thinking “Shadow DOM might be suitable here”, it’s a terrible idea. Good places to use it are actually really niche. Declarative Shadow DOM, more recently added and not yet universally supported, fixes one of the two biggest problems with it (that you have to load and run scripts before it can work), but the other one (that it’s strong insulating encapsulation, which is just occasionally what you want but normally not) is by design and is not going to change. In the forms they’ve ended up in, Shadow DOM was a mistake (yes, they should have just left browser widgets like <select> and <audio controls> special), and Web Components were almost certainly a mistake.

colordrops 3y ago
I've been using shadow DOM almost exclusively for 7 years in very high profile important applications with no incident due to its use. If your code is properly encapsulated you won't have a problem. There shouldn't be any reason for other production components to pierce the shadow DOM boundary.
- chrismorgan 3y ago
  Since you talk from this angle, here’s an example from a different perspective of how this is still a problem (though I maintain it’s almost always a terrible idea for development/maintenance reasons where people think to use it, too—few components actually want what Shadow DOM gets them): I’m a user. I want to write user scripts to tweak things to my liking and to support my specific use cases. If you use shadow roots (especially closed ones), you may fundamentally prevent me from doing so, removing the agency of my user agent. I don’t like that.