Polymer was incredibly even slower that React and even more overbuilt, and it had the added negative that it tried to enforce a visual style as well, which was too much for most people. Google couldn’t spend its way out of that hole.

As for Web Component specs, we got v1 because of Apple and Mozilla: Google would happily have stayed with v0.

I'm glad to have read this today. I'm going to look into how I could use web components in my next side project. I'd really like something that worked easily with SSR and client-side, maybe using htmx.

In retrospect, I think I avoided web components because of Google and their aggressive dev relations pushing Polymer. It felt so one-sided that it didn't seem like a web standard. It felt more like a Google "standard" like NaCL. Having to ship Polymer to support non-Google browsers felt even more heavy weight than React.

> I'd really like something that worked easily with SSR and client-side

Then you should skip Web Components :)

For sure. SSR is one thing that React has done well, and that Web Components don’t have a great story for.

I'm pretty sure that just shipping the HTML works. The nice thing if I use web components is that I can just have my backend create HTML that uses those components. I can create elements whatever way I want on the backend or the front-end so long as it is HTML.

Yes, if you stick to custom elements. If you want shadow dom encapsulation then you’ll need to wait for declarative shadow dom to turn up in all browsers.