Web awesome: "Shoelace 3.0" open source web components
backers.webawesome.com
backers.webawesome.com
> since Material Web seemed to quickly end up in maintenance mode
This is really unfortunate to say the least - the engineering team has done a fantastic job there, but apparently no backing from Google despite the nice promise at the the launch of Material Web.
> As a Web Awesome backer, this early alpha release is just for you. Please refrain from sharing it for the time being!
Backend tools are backed by enterprises more than frontend tools. Frontend more often than not these enterprises build their own to some extent.
* Composes better than backend does. Frontend software mostly has to "look" right. It can be dropped in. Going the extra mile to integrate is not always necessary (e.g. keyboard navigation, screen reader support, all the stuff that is "easy" to forget).
* Easier to sell in this niche. The overlap between design/creative and software. Designers already have tons of libraries like this. E.g., FontAwesome, Noun Project, font libraries, stock images. They're already looking for new libraries of resources.
* There's also a common language all frontend software has to be written in, and there's a lot of tools for interop if need be. The market is just larger.
Backend software just doesn't compose as well. People expect when they pay for something for it to fit X use case or they leave. Backend has so many more use cases/entry points to get to MVP. It usually works or it doesn't. Perhaps why of the things monetized in the backend (databases, proprietary web servers), most are big monoliths and exist at well-defined software boundaries where things must be serialized to the "wire" to communicate.
Could it be that people with more backend-oriented skills are better compensated, or have better market-job-security, than those with frontend-oriented skills on average with respect to regular employment or contracts? If it were so then the usefulness and/or marketability of a project might matter less to respective creators in how to offer their work to the public.
Jankily expressed as backend can afford to produce more for fun and/or street cred, frontend wants both but feels pressure to demonstrate value on top.
You have complete control over the backend, whereas the frontend needs to work with software you have no control over (browser and related extensions, and whatever custom settings the user has applied)
For most companies, the development ROI on the backend is higher, and it's easier to just buy as much of the frontend as possible.
Being native JS and self encapsulating is very powerful in that kind of use case.
Hard to see web components really competing with Vue/React for large apps still, but love to see development in this space.
In that world, what would be the tradeoffs between:
- NextJs + Tailwind + ShadCN
- NextJS + ?? + Shoelace
I don't have a good sense of how web components compare to practice of "copy-by-value, then compile-into-binary" UI shipping that's common in the Next + Shad world these days.
Looking forward to WebAwesome!
I know the stuff loading from elsewhere will be slow, but the About page content seems to be pretty lazily lazy-loading.
Is this 100% by design? Pagespeed scores and such?
Thanks for sharing.
So yeah, a lot of lazy loading. :-) There are probably some pages where we could ease up on that.