HTML web components in the spotlight

December 12, 2023

HTML web components are getting a lot of attention right now. I have collected several articles about them in Pocket over the past month. I also heard Chris and Dave discuss them on a recent Shop Talk Show as I traveled home from Kentucky on Saturday.

I have read about web components in the past. They have not had a great appeal to me for some reason or another. I think I was a bit put off by the Shadow DOM part. I was not sure how that worked with accessibility and whether would it work without JavaScript. It is one of those technologies that I would read about but filter out as something that I did not see much practical value in the work I was doing.

I even have a book on Inclusive Components that I never did finish. The idea was interesting to me but they didn’t quite seem ready for primetime.

I will also admit that I have not embraced the idea of components like many front-end developers. I never got into React or other frameworks that push this idea of breaking things up into components. It is just not the way that I have worked or the way that I think about organizing my work.

The following are recent articles I have collected and would like to read over the next few weeks. I look forward to better understanding web components and how they might fit into the projects that I am working on.

• HTML Web Components Are Having a Moment (Scott Vandehey, Cloud Four) – This article includes many links to recent web components articles. I would suggest that you go check those out. I did skim through this article as I prepared this post. I resonated with several of the things Scott said about his journey with web components.
• HTML web components (Jeremy Keith)
• Blinded By the Light DOM (Eric Meyer)
• The elevator pitch for Web Components (Chris Ferdinandi)
• HTML Web Components (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Web Components FTW! (Chris Ferdinandi)
• Web Components make your code more obvious (Chris Ferdinandi)
• HTML Web Components (Jim Nielsen)
• HTML Web Components: An Example (Jim Nielsen)
• Shop Talk Show #592: Web Component Therapy, SEO Therapy, and Learning Something New like Swift – I did listen to this podcast episode on my recent road trip. It got me a little more excited to read more about Web Components.

This post is part of my attempt to post something every day for a month. I was inspired by Michelle Barker, who recently participated in National Blog Posting Month