Hello, this is a tool that lets you paste some quick react components into any static website. So a Github page, Shopify, Wordpress, etc.
Sometimes I google a cool React calculator and Webpack is confusing and ReactDom throws errors so I built this. I just wanted it on my page fast. It works with the most popular 1000 react libraries or so but you can request others - https://smarketman.com/approved/packages/
Since the most common use for this is visual and marketing related components, I put in a simple IF/ELSE structure for when to show components. You can see more at the homepage: https://smarketman.com/.
You can do some complex things by combining them. Like having a popup to ask for someone's email when they scroll down a page. A/B Testing some titles. Or say showing a coupon code the last hour of every weekend.
Hey, this is super cool thanks for making. A whole lot of rsync - dropbox comments here. I want to be able to give product managers a way to change the look and copy of components using retool. That way they can skip engineering intervention and changes things themselves. Going to try to see if this helps.
I'm confused why you need a tool for this. If you are writing the react code, and adding the script to your web page... this tool just seems to be an alternative to webpack? It doesn't seem to be solving a technical problem as much as a knowledge problem - if you don't know how to build a React app, this might make it one step easier. Is that the intent?
Yeah, there probably is a niche that wants this - I would just expect that the people who know how to write the code for React component, but do not know how to bundle it to put on a page is not only a small niche, but an inherently shrinking niche -- why would someone learn to code, but then deliberately skip learning to deploy that code?
My comment isn't a criticism! I was just confused what you were doing, but now I get it. You run webpack for people and then host the bundle for them. If the title was "Webpack as a service", I would've immediately got it. But I guess your target audience probably wouldn't so your title makes sense for the audience you're targeting + SEO.
It would've never occurred to me to make something like this, but after searching for the terms you suggested below, I do see many people asking for this. Telling those people "just setup node/npm/webpack" is probably not helpful. Your service is easier for those people. Nice job identifying a solution for people with a problem!
Really cool on a technical level, but part of me thinks good lord, is anyone out there working on making the web simpler instead of more complicated and magical?
Converting all jsx/javascript from one framework to another would be extremely hard. It's easier to start with something more basic like a mustache/handlebars template - and then add framework specific functionality on top of that. That's what I'm planning for my Chrome extension SnipCSS. (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snipcss/hbdnoadcma...)
After creating a snippet from someone else's website with the extension, you can get a mustache template by going to templates tab in extension options. React/Vue is coming really soon - next week I should have an update with the feature.
You can see many examples if you google - "How do I put react into my " Github page/Shopify/Wordpress etc.
Many developers inherit or prefer a plain page and just want to use a cool open source react component real quick like adding a slick calculator to their existing webpage.
As said below, most common react libraries will fail if you try to just use ReactDOM. Mounting has many issues if you try it for more than the basic hello world.
Not to mention you can use multiple different versions of react with this.
> most common react libraries will fail if you try to just use ReactDOM
I'd think that would be a pretty big sign that React might not be the right tool for the job. I'm all for building custom hammers but sometimes it might just be better to just grab a screwdriver.
My comment wasn't a critique on your product. I can totally see how this could be handy and I'll keep it bookmarked. I was mostly critiquing that web devs nowadays always seem to try and reach out for some React package whenever they hit any sort of problem. I can see that the React packages are mandatory, any plans to support other frameworks?
Vue would be pretty easy. From personal experience it’s mostly react that’s has all these open source things someone might want. Was there one you were thinking of?
Funny enough I ran into this exact use case recently. We have a marketing site for a client done with webflow..But we needed to add a third party widget that only had an react library. So I ended up creating a CRA project so that I could include the bundled file and render the component as needed using the same setup (it was a modal + some purchase logic). Added some bare js hooks to trigger some of the logic via a button press. Worked well actually
I do see the value in this. Especially for folks trying to add some cool react widgets without doing the full dev - specially for some old code-base. Respect!
You can just build your react components into a bundle and reference that. Just like this tool is doing behind the scenes. That's how most people use React.
Yeah this is a really handy shortcut to doing all that!
I work with collaborators hosting their sites on old legacy pages (in Academia, hosted on university systems); this could make it easy for me to configure components for them to drop in for various needs.
I am confused. It says I can paste React components into any website, but what do I do with the generated script tags? how can do I paste this into github.com or news.ycombinator.com?
If this is a way to just generate a build for me to paste into my own website, then the messaging needs to be adjusted. However, I do like how simple it is to just get a quick React build together without having to deal with the tooling.
Sometimes I google a cool React calculator and Webpack is confusing and ReactDom throws errors so I built this. I just wanted it on my page fast. It works with the most popular 1000 react libraries or so but you can request others - https://smarketman.com/approved/packages/
Since the most common use for this is visual and marketing related components, I put in a simple IF/ELSE structure for when to show components. You can see more at the homepage: https://smarketman.com/.
You can do some complex things by combining them. Like having a popup to ask for someone's email when they scroll down a page. A/B Testing some titles. Or say showing a coupon code the last hour of every weekend.