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CSS Web Components for marketing sites (2024)

132 points by zigzag312

by spankalee

7 subcomments

I'm a big web components guy, but calling these web components is a massive stretch of the word component.
The word "component" has to mean something ultimately, and to me the defining feature of a web component is that it's self-contained: it brings along its own dependencies, whether that's JavaScript, templates, CSS, etc. Web components shouldn't require an external framework or external CSS (except for customization by the user) - those things should be implementation details depended on directly by the component.
This here is just CSS using tag names for selectors. The element is doing nothing on its own.
Which is fine! It's just not web components.
edit: Also, don't do this:
```
    <link-button>
      <a href="">Learn more</a>
    </link-button>
```
That just adds HTML bloat to the page, something people with a singular focus on eliminating JavaScript often forget to worry about. Too many HTML elements can slow the page to a crawl.
Use classes:
```
    <a class="button" href="">Learn more</a>
```
They're meant for this, lighter weight, and highly optimized.

by hawkticehurst

1 subcomments

Author of the blog post here! Since this blog post, I put this idea to practice on the VS Code website (https://code.visualstudio.com/) to create all the interactive graphics on the homepage. Which is a slightly different use case than what I described in the post, but cool and effective none-the-less.
What woud have been a soup of `div` elements with various class names are now more meaningfully named elements like `<top-bar>`, `<chat-container>`, etc. that were mixed and remixed to create all the graphics.
Also no issues regarding performance that we've seen up to this point, which makes sense; browsers are very good and fast at rendering HTML elements (native or custom).

by sublinear

0 subcomment

My experience with marketing pages is that they usually have a ton of inconsistent design requirements and change frequently.
Most "frameworks" are the wrong tool because they assume that the markup and design (HTML/CSS) won't change as much as the functionality (JS) when it's exactly the opposite situation.
All the consistency needs to be concentrated in the JS without the baggage of any particular HTML/CSS in mind.
The only aspects of a framework you should want are a flexible way to register event listeners onto the elements, and organizing the styles and callbacks.
In practice, this ends up looking like a static HTML file that is not up to the developers how to organize apart from the usage of CSS classes because it will be audited by many non-devs, a Sass build derived from design guidelines with some alt classes to contain the mess when people change their minds, and some very robust JS that you're gonna have to write almost entirely from scratch.
I still don't get why this scares some people off though. You won't ever need to (re)write that much JS. Every new page design is just remapping existing functionality to the new HTML IDs, and maybe every now and then adding new functionality. Most of your time will be spent in CSS which just plain makes sense!

by dgb23

0 subcomment

I like that the author came to the idea by cross pollination via web components.
However, it's basically describing the "modifiers" part of BEM, which is a pattern that emerged from structuring CSS. Neither custom element or attributes are needed, even though they might feel different.
If you like that kind of pattern to structure CSS, then combining it with custom CSS properties (often called "variables", example: --block-spacing: 2rem) makes it even more modular. These properties follow the cascade rule.

by kelvindegrees

1 subcomments

Is this not exactly what DaisyUI (https://daisyui.com) is?

0 subcomment

by Footprint0521

0 subcomment

This feels like saying “what if we just coded in raw HTML CSS instead of JS library bloat.”
Which is valid but also this article idea seems to make the rounds every two weeks

by senfiaj

1 subcomments

I'm not a fan of these custom elements. Unless you do something really interactive, dynamic and reusable (an element with complex behavior), I don't think it's worth to use them. The SEO / accessibility becomes more challenging. Also, worth to noting, web components require JS, so they are not pure "CSS" web components. Web components are useful for isolation, when used with shadow DOM.

by hyperhello

0 subcomment

The reason fixing ads from the inside won’t work is that they are designed to disrupt. An ad that ruins your scrolling for three seconds is preferable to one that ruins your scrolling for 2.5 seconds. All ads are designed to wreck the environment that they are in, to create a space for irrationality to enter.

by vaylian

0 subcomment

I've never been deep into XSLT, but I kind of have the impression, that this would have solved the issue.

by Zardoz84

0 subcomment

Using a expression from Spain : Es mas viejo que el cagar.

by Kalabasa

0 subcomment

See also https://jordanbrennan.hashnode.dev/tac-a-new-css-methodology

by dannye

0 subcomment

<tag-name>
Browsers create ANY tag with at least one dash as a *Custom Element*
They come in TWO flavours, and since they ARE HTMLElement, can be used for layout AND styling with CSS.
The official names are:
► UNdefined Custom Elements (the article calls these "CSS Web Components")
```
  - shadowDOM optional with Declarative ShadowDOM
```
► Defined Custom Elements - Defined with the JavaScript Custom Elements API
```
  - shadowDOM optional
  - A new Element, or an UPGRADED existing UNdefined Custom Element
```
---
### Good to know about UNDEFINED Custom Elements:
* Absolutely NO JavaScript required, it is only HTML and CSS
* This is STANDARD behaviour in all browsers for nearly a DECADE now: Chrome (2016) Safari (2017) FireFox (2018)
* The W3C HTML Validator accepts ALL <tag-name> Custom Elements with a dash as HTMLElement. It does not accept <tagname> (no dash), those are HTMLUnknownElement
* Custom Elements do not inherit the standard [hidden] behaviour; so you have to add that behaviour yourself in your stylesheet.
* Same for DIVs display:block. You have to set the display property on these Custom Elements yourself. (You will forget this 20 times, then you never make the mistake again)
* The :defined pseudo selector targets standard HTML tags and JavaScript defined Custom Elements
* Thus :not(:defined) targets the UNdefined Custom Elements; again... they are still valid HTMLElement so CSS applies like any element
* <you-are-not-bound-to-one-dash>
* Declarative ShadowDOM <template shadowrootmode="open"> creates the same UNdefined Custom Elements WITH a shadowDOM
* The Custom Elements JavaScript API upgrades UNdefined Custom Elements TO defined Custom Elements.
* You can't UNdefine defined Custom Elements
* You can't REMOVE a set shadowRoot
* for now, only Safari supports multiple custom element registries (duplicating Custom Element names)
----
Why?
► Try to find that closing </div> in a long HTML page. </tag-name> is always just there.
► Built a UI that doesn't FOUC, and UPGRADE it lazy-loaded with more logic and interactivity... you can not do this with technologies that CREATE HTML AFTER DOM was parsed.
Custom Elements/Web Components ARE HTML; Frameworks CREATE HTML
We will forever call Custom Elements: Web Components, and vice versa...

by pier25

2 subcomments

Why not just use CSS?

0 subcomment