((
I've split my reply into three parts to avoid a wall of text in a single comment.
I may run into "you're posting too fast, so not all part may appear at the same time"
))
Part 1.
> I honestly believe that 90% of the dislike for WC comes from the name "connectedCallback". If they'd named it "onCreate" or something, everyone would be using it
Of course not. None of the criticism towards Web Components ever mentions "connectedCallback", or how it should be named differently.
Do you know the actual reason so few are using them? Let's skip the atrocious not-really-high-level not-really-low-level imperative API that they offer.
- Shadow DOM is infecting every spec so that the actual useful specs like Scoped CSS have to be delayed almost indefinitely to try and figure out how to work with this abomination of a design
To quote the report linked above, "many of these pain points are directly related to Shadow DOM's encapsulation"
- The amount of specs that are required to make them work, barely, and be "good web citizens". And the amount of APIs.
Oh, you want your custom input to a) be able to send its data in a form, and b) be accessible to a label outside of your component? Well, there's a separate API for a) and there's some separate future API for b). And meanwhile your custom button won't be able to submit your form, sorry, it's a 4-year old issue with no solution: https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents/issues/814
And all that despite the fact that there are already a dozen specs covering web components, and dozens more on their way.
- Web Components ar HTMLElement. It means you cannot use them inside SVGs.
This makes them unsuitable to a huge swath of graphics- and visualisation-related applications.
- A smattering of other issues:
-- They cannot be easily used when progressive enhancement is required: SSR story is still non-existent, you can't easily update the original DOM in a custom element without trashing it.
-- They cannot be easily lazy-loaded because slotted content is eagerly loaded:
<p>Toggle the section for more info:</p>
<toggled-section>
<html-include src="./more-info.html"/>
</toggled-section>
`html-include` will load in its entirety even if you never toggle the section. And yes, this causes a cascading loading of multiple resources, too.
-- they share a flat global namespace. Of course this will be solved in the next five years by a yet another spec.
--------------
If any userland framework had these many issues, it would be laughed out of the room. And yet here we are with people trying to argue that they are good now actually and all that stops them from being used is "connectedCallback" name.
These are also the reason why most framework authors that initially supported web components (Vue, Svelte, Solid) are now at best completely indifferent towards them.
Not going to go through point by point, because this isn't a great format for longer form discussion.
In general, the points you're raising apply to edge case use of WC.
Most of your gripes are around shadow dom, and I understand that and agree with you - CSS parts and all that stuff are pretty bad. However - I don't use shadow dom. It was intended to be low level API for when you need to author with complete encapsulation.
I've been doing native WC for years and I've never run into a situation where I need shadow dom. Or slots. Or any of that stuff.
The "attributes" vs "props" thing is a html/dom issue, not a WC issue, and again - just about any rendering library will deal with it for you, the same way react or vue or whatever does. It's an utter non-issue in normal development, I write WCs every day and haven't even thought about that in forever.
SSR and lazy loading are anti-features for me. If you really want them with WC the sure, jump into a framework like stencil, but I have zero use for them.
SSR is all about SEO and FCP, and I've never really grokked it's usefulness.
If I need SEO I don't do UI SPA stuff, I just write server side, and I don't need a component framework for that. FCP (first contentful paint) is already a gazillion times faster with WC than any framework I've ever used. The whole point of lazy loading is to defer work until it needs to be done, but you already get that with reactivity - you trigger your component data load on a property setter anyway if it needs to load, and if it's just rendering off properties there's no need for a lazy load.
The TLDR is that you're making this massive straw man argument about bad API with WC, but it's for this tiny edge case of use that's only intended for library authors and such.
The 99% use case will never encounter any of that.
I could build up a big(er) wall of text about the same sort of stuff for all of the frameworks too.
When you want to do complex things - it's complex.
In years of WC work, light weight components using light DOM and a little templating library - I've run into the issues you're talking about exactly zero times.
Also, you may want to double check your understanding of frameworks use and embrace of WCs.
> edge case use ... I've ... for me ... I ... straw man
This is why I hate engaging into any arguments with proponents and apologists of web components.
Any concern and criticism is brushed away as non-existent and insignificant. Even if the actual people who develop this and push this into the browsers are now marking them as not only valid, but a significant problem.
But sure, do keep telling yourslef that theonly reason why more people don't use them is because people don't like the name "connectedCallback"
> you may want to double check your understanding of frameworks use and embrace of WCs.
Please do this yourself. Outside of frameworks and libraries that explicitly advertise themselves as being 100% based on web components (like lit and stencil) almost no one uses them as the foundation. They may consume them, and they may have a way to compile components to them, but almost none actually use them.
And yes, keep telling yourself it's because of "connectedCallback" naming.
I may run into "you're posting too fast, so not all part may appear at the same time" ))
Part 1.
> I honestly believe that 90% of the dislike for WC comes from the name "connectedCallback". If they'd named it "onCreate" or something, everyone would be using it
Of course not. None of the criticism towards Web Components ever mentions "connectedCallback", or how it should be named differently.
Do you know the actual reason so few are using them? Let's skip the atrocious not-really-high-level not-really-low-level imperative API that they offer.
How about:
- 13 years after introduction they still need 20 more specs to try and patch just some of the holes in their original design: https://w3c.github.io/webcomponents-cg/2022.html
- Shadow DOM is infecting every spec so that the actual useful specs like Scoped CSS have to be delayed almost indefinitely to try and figure out how to work with this abomination of a design
To quote the report linked above, "many of these pain points are directly related to Shadow DOM's encapsulation"
- The amount of specs that are required to make them work, barely, and be "good web citizens". And the amount of APIs.
Oh, you want your custom input to a) be able to send its data in a form, and b) be accessible to a label outside of your component? Well, there's a separate API for a) and there's some separate future API for b). And meanwhile your custom button won't be able to submit your form, sorry, it's a 4-year old issue with no solution: https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents/issues/814
And all that despite the fact that there are already a dozen specs covering web components, and dozens more on their way.
- Web Components ar HTMLElement. It means you cannot use them inside SVGs.
This is impossible:
This makes them unsuitable to a huge swath of graphics- and visualisation-related applications.- A smattering of other issues:
-- They cannot be easily used when progressive enhancement is required: SSR story is still non-existent, you can't easily update the original DOM in a custom element without trashing it.
-- They cannot be easily lazy-loaded because slotted content is eagerly loaded:
`html-include` will load in its entirety even if you never toggle the section. And yes, this causes a cascading loading of multiple resources, too.-- they share a flat global namespace. Of course this will be solved in the next five years by a yet another spec.
--------------
If any userland framework had these many issues, it would be laughed out of the room. And yet here we are with people trying to argue that they are good now actually and all that stops them from being used is "connectedCallback" name.
These are also the reason why most framework authors that initially supported web components (Vue, Svelte, Solid) are now at best completely indifferent towards them.