In which Brian takes a long winding route through an explanation of why the is attribute for custom elements is dead before he demonstrates the correct way to use web components:
<!-- instead of writing this -->
<input type="radio" is="x-radio">
<!-- you write this -->
<x-radio>
<input type="radio">
</x-radio>
Sadly, none of the showcase examples I’ve seen for web components do this.
Depending on how you’re currently structuring your CSS and class attributes, web components might not make all that much of a difference to your workflow.
A great presentation on web components by Marcy, with an emphasis on keeping them accessible.
Soledad Penadés also went to the Extensible Web Summit in Berlin, where she gave a lightning talk. Sounds like it was really good.
This also includes some good advice that, again, Alex might want to consider before denouncing any disagreement on Web Components as “piffle and tosh”:
If the W3C, or any other standardisation organisation wants to attract “normal” developers to get more diverse inputs, they/we should start by being respectful to everyone. Don’t try to show everyone how superclever you are. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t scare people away, because then only the loud ones stay, and the quieter shy people, or people who have more urgent matters to attend (such as, you know, having a working business website even if it’s not using the latest and greatest API) will just leave.
The authors of the Extensible Web Manifesto explain the thinking behind their …uh… thinking.
There’s a lot to like here, with some practical examples of where we’ve seen a disconnect between JavaScript APIs and declarative HTML (looking at you, Geolocation).
Alex starts with a bit of a rant about the phrase “semantic HTML”, which should really just be “well-written HTML, but there then follows some excellent thoughts on the emergence of meaning and the process of standardising on vocabularies.
A thoughtful piece on the question of extensibility in HTML5.
Bert Bos's 2000 Treatise (published in 2003) is a must-read for anyone involved in developing any kind of format. "This essay tries to make explicit what the developers in the various W3C working groups mean when they invoke words like efficiency, maintainability, accessibility, extensibility, learnability, simplicity, longevity, and other long words ending in -y."