Web components are not supported in many popular browsers. Until they are widely supported they are not a thing. And no, Polymer and co are not polyfills for them, they are their own incompatible frameworks.
I agree in principle but it's up to browser vendors to implement specs, and it is always the same offender that is dragging his feet.
> Edge and Firefox are only missing Shadow DOM and Custom Elements,
Your statement makes no sense whatsoever, they are "only missing" 2 of the most fundamental features of web components? that would actually help getting rid of all these incompatible UI toolkits? I don't call that supporting Web Components at all if you can't write custom elements natively. You obviously do not understand how the lack of support for custom element and shadow DOM affects Web Components adoption.
Not supporting 2/3 of a spec is not being compliant with that spec, obviously.
> Apparently you haven't read my comment as you missed "which they are already developing." part.
Apparently you haven't read my first comment either, since you can't tell the difference between "a spec is implemented" and "planning to implement a spec" which you obviously count as "a spec is implemented" for you or you would have refrained from making your first comment.
And no, there is no polyfills for shadow DOM or Custom Element, that's a lie. Polymer is not a Polyfill for Web Components, it's his own framework.
As for your question, I'm talking about browsers that do not support Custom Elements right now. Edge does not.
As for Edge it is already in development, and to be honest it doesn't matter with its insignificant market share.
When Microsoft employees use only Chrome at BUILD to show Azure and .NET Core MVC features, the writing is on the wall how relevant the browser is on the market.
Still you keep running away to clarify what "many browsers" means.
Maybe it is my lack of native English skills, but Edge being a single browser is far away from being "many browsers", even if we include Firefox until they get out of beta, two still does not make "many browsers".
> As for Edge it is already in development, and to be honest it doesn't matter with its insignificant market share.
Market shares are not the same across countries, clients or even industries. That's the first mistake you are making. If I develop a product, I target whatever browser my customers use, not some world wide statistic that has very little local significance.
You just don't get to ignore what goes against your point just to feel that you are winning an argument, that's childish.
> 100% on mobile Web.
Which is False, Firefox on Android doesn't support web components.
> Firefox already on beta.
Which doesn't matter if support has not shipped. "will ship" is not "has shipped". I am only interested in current support, as we speak, I was never talking about "will eventually ship" since I don't work with eventual features, obviously.
According to netmarketshare[0], on desktop[1], Edge currently has 3.8% market share, more than Safari and Opera together. Combining mobile+desktop Edge has 2%.
Edge cannot be ignored if one is serious about any kind of business: that's 3-4 out of every 100 desktop users (existing or potential customers), or 'just' 2/100 if one includes mobile.
— Honestly, it seems that you are trolling. But I post the above stats in case you are not. But I also back it up with my own personal 'anecdata': I build business-to-business ecommerce, in our specific market our users are primarily (>95%) using desktop browsers, we have many thousands of existing business relationships, we cannot mandate which browsers they use — we draw the line at having the site simply work in all "modern browsers", which obviously includes Edge.
It doesn't really matter whether it's "many browsers" that don't support Web Components, or whether it's just one major browser. For many businesses, choosing WC is simply not a viable option for the foreseeable future.
You are reading it wrong, it is not me that mandates the browsers.
I have written already in multiple answers, it is the customers that decide which browsers should a given project support, by explicitly stating them on the project delivery contract.
So your customers care about EDGE, fine. Many don't.
Hm, maybe I missed the context somewhere along the lines. Are you talking about something on the developer side only? I thought the discussion was about something that works or not for the end user.
Edge is implementing (updated the roadmap), Firefox ships enabled WC's in closest release (it is already in the beta) I think Firefox 63 will ship in a week?.
what polyfills are you talking about? And no, Polymer is not a polyfill for custom element. Please link me to a library that will polyfill the entire shadow DOM and Custom Element spec so that I can write the same code without polyfills on platforms that support both specs and only load the polyfills on platforms that do not.
I know that is not what HN likes to read, but iOS == Safari and Android == Chrome, and unless customer explicitly requires Firefox Mobile on the RFP, it gets ignored in acceptance testing for project delivery.
Yup, Polymer is "big" dependency, but with things like svelte, litelement or stencil you can build web components which have little overhead.
Also polyfills are separate thing from polymer - they are reused by ALL other frameworks including vuejs for example, so I'm not sure what you meant by that comment.
I agree in principle but it's up to browser vendors to implement specs, and it is always the same offender that is dragging his feet.