api-viewer-element VS catalyst

Documentation generated with api-viewer web component, using my plugin to generate the manifest!

Using a custom-elements.json file, it would be easy to generate or display demos for your component using tools such as api-viewer-element, or automatically generate Storybook knobs for your components. 11ty plugins could be created to automatically create your documentation sites for you.

> Web components are low-level APIs and just don't have the ergonomics of frameworks without a library to help. For a few elements built by a few true believers, this is ok, but when you scale it out to every component in a complex app with company-wide teams you need the ergonomics and consistency-setting of a declarative and reactive API.

GitHub did have their own declarative semi-reactice webcomponent framework. It's pretty nice!

https://github.github.io/catalyst/

It not at all coincidentally bears some resemblance to the (thinner, simpler) Invoker Commands API that has shipped in HTML (they share a main author):

https://open-ui.org/components/invokers.explainer/

Reminds me of GitHub catalyst web component framework, which has targets & actions. https://github.com/github/catalyst

Working on the next Web UI (TypeScript + Catalyst).

Catalyst (opt-in via CLI flag)

They actually use a web component system, with a library called Catalyst used to make things a bit easier. They aren't simply doing raw DOM manipulation in Vanilla JavaScript, they're using components and what is essentially a fairly lightweight framework.

Personally, I'd really like to see the unmolested, with-dependencies versions[1].

This version is VERY easy to ship and adopt. But in my mind, these components hide how the sausage is made! Many were built with a library (Catalyst[2]), but the tools were obfuscated out in these end products.

There's a huge amount to be said for these web components. We need more models like this. But I also think there's an opportunity lost here, to teach, to inform, to help others learn how to build components, using the tech Github actually used to develop them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26439167

[2] https://github.com/github/catalyst

GitHub Catalyst is a library that makes it easier to develop Web Components.

The only real escape is using something like /r/webcomponents. I did some playing around with Github's new Catalyst framework over the holidays, quite enjoyed it. But you'd be one of the only people on the planet using it. Stick with whatever works for you.