I’m a fan of the componentization of the web. I think it’s a very nice way to build a website at just about any scale (except, perhaps, the absolute most basic). There are no shortage of opinions about what makes a good component, but say we scope that to third-party for a moment. That is, components that you just use, rather than components that you build yourself as part of your site’s unique setup.

What makes a third-party component good? My favorite attribute of a third-party component is when it takes something hard and makes it easy. Particularly things that recognize and properly handle nuances, or things that you might not even know enough about to get right.

Perhaps you use some component that does pop-up contextual menus for you. It might perform browser edge detection, such as ensuring the menu never appears cut off or off-screen. That’s a tricky little bit of programming that you might not get right if you did it yourself — or even forget to do.

I think of the <Link /> component that React Router has or what’s used on Gatsby sites. It automatically injects aria-current="page" for you on the links when you’re on that page. You can and probably should use that for a styling hook! And you probably would have forgotten to program that if you were handling your own links.

In that same vein, Reach UI Tabs have rigorous accessibility baked into them that you probably wouldn’t get right if you hand-rolled them. This React image component does all sorts of stuff that is relatively difficult to pull off with images, like the complex responsive images syntax, lazy loading, placeholders, etc. This is, in a sense, handing you best practices for “free.”

Here’s a table library that doesn’t even touch UI for you, and instead focuses on other needs you’re likely to have with tables, which is another fascinating approach.

Anyway! Here’s what y’all said when I was asking about this. What makes a third-party component awesome? What do …

NetNewsWire is one of the classic RSS apps, debuting in 2002. I was pretty stoked when it went 5.0 and was open-sourced in August 2019! You can snag it right here. (Sorry, Mac only.)

It’s super nice, is fast, and looks great. It has just the right features.

But… I thought, at least at first, that really prefer websites for reading RSS content. I have multiple machines. I have mobile devices. I don’t want my RSS to be limited to my laptop, I want an online service.

Well! I found out that NetNewsWire syncs with my favorite website for RSS: Feedbin. The syncing works flawlessly. Both unread items and all the organization. In fact, the UI for organizing feeds is so nice in NetNewsWire that I managed everything there and was pleasantly surprised how it all synced perfectly with Feedbin.

Who’s gonna read your personal blog because it has an RSS feed? I’m gonna read your personal blog because it has an RSS feed. pic.twitter.com/mtcyKhEVet

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) January 7, 2020

I know a lot of people miss Google Reader, but I think we’ve arrived at an even better place after all these years. The Google Reader UI for Google Reader was OK, but the main benefit was that it was the central place where everything synced together. That meant people could experiment by building readers and could use whatever they wanted. Feedbin clearly has APIs that can handle those types of things, so perhaps it could become that central hub service, which would be awesome.

I use Reeder on iOS, which also syncs with Feedbin. The central hub is real.

I know a lot of people love Feedly too, which is also good. I just click with Feedbin better. I particularly like the Feedbin feature where it gives me an email address I can have newsletters sent to, letting me subscribe to a ton of them the same way I do with sites.

The …

Where do you put styles in web components?

I’m assuming that we’re using the Shadow DOM here as, to me, that’s one of the big draws of a web component: a platform thing that is a uniquely powerful thing the platform can do. So this is about defining styles for a web component in a don’t-leak-out way, and less so a way to get global styles to leak in (although that’s very interesting as well, which can be done via custom properties which we’ll look at later in the article).

If you’re building the template inside the JavaScript — which is nice because of template literals and how we can sprinkle our data into the template nicely — you need access to those styles in JavaScript.

const template = `
  <style>${styles}</style>
  <div class="${class}">
    <h2>${title}</h2>
    ${content}
  </div>
`;

Where does that style variable come from? Maybe also a template literal?

const style = `
  :host {
    background: white;
  }
  h2 {
    font: 900 1.5rem/1.1 -system-ui, sans-serif;
  }
`;

I guess that’s fine, but it makes for a big messy block of code just dunked somewhere in the class where you’re trying to build this web component.

Another way is to <template> the template and make a <style> block part of it.

<template id="card-template">
  <style>
    :host {
      background: white;
    }
    h2 {
      font: 900 1.5rem/1.1 -system-ui, sans-serif;
    }
  </style>

  <div id="card-hook">
    <h2 id="title-hook"></h2>
    <p id="desc-hook"></p>
  </div>
</template>

I can see the appeal with this because it keeps HTML in HTML. What I don’t love about it is that you have to do a bunch of manual shadowRoot.querySelector("#title-hook").innerHTML = myData.title; work in order to flesh out that template. That doesn’t feel like a convenient template. I also don’t love that you need to just chuck this template somewhere in your HTML. Where? I dunno. Just chuck it in there. Chuck it.

The CSS is moved out of the JavaScript too, but it just moved from one awkward location to another.

If we wanted to keep the CSS in a CSS file, we can …

I think we all have an intuitive understanding that, at the beginning of projects that require our creativity (be it design or code), things feel uncertain and messy. Then, as we go, things tend to straighten out. There is still some wiggling and setbacks, but by the end, we find a single solution and ship it.

Apparently this feeling has a logo: The Design Squiggle

It comes from Damien Newman who says that a client gave him 30 seconds to sell them on the value of design, and this did the trick.

I find it a little funny to take this little concept and give it such a grandiose presentation. A dedicated website! A story with a boatload of name dropping! Very specific attribution instructions! But hey, I don’t have any famous doodles, and I gotta admit, this does a great job of expressing a complex thing quite quickly.

Reminds me of a boss a buddy of mine had who claims to have invented the Curiously Strong motto for Altoids, and didn’t mind telling people about it.

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