Chris Heilmann has written about Web Components.
If you want to see the mess that is the standardisation effort around web components right now in all its ugliness, Wilson Page wrote a great post on that on Mozilla Hacks. Make sure to also read the comments – lots of good stuff there.
Indeed a very good blog post to read. Then Chris went on saying:
Web Components are a great idea. Modules are a great idea. Together, they bring us hours and hours of fun debating where what should be done to create a well-performing, easy to maintain and all around extensible complex app for the web.
This is twitching in the back of my mind for the last couple of weeks. And I kind of remember a wicked pattern from 10 years ago. Enter Compound Document Formats (CDF) with its WICD (read wicked) specifications. If you think I'm silly, check the CDF FAQ:
When combining content from arbitrary sources, a number of problems present themselves, including how rendering is handled when crossing from one markup language to another, or how events propagate across the same boundaries, or how to interpret the meaning of a piece of content within an unanticipated context.
and
Simply put, a compound document is a mixture of content in any number of formats. Compound documents range from static (say, XHTML that includes a simple SVG illustration) to very dynamic (a full-fledged Web Application). A compound document may include its parts directly (such as when you include an SVG image in an XHTML file) or by reference (such as when you embed a separate SVG document in XHTML using an
<object>element. There are benefits to both, and the application should determine which one you use. For instance, inclusion by reference facilitates reuse and eases maintenance of a large number of resources. Direct inclusion can improve portability or offline use. W3C will support both modes, called CDR ("compound documents by reference") and CDI ("compound documents by inclusion").
At that time, the Web and W3C, where full throttle on XML and namespaces. Now, the cool kids on the block are full HTML, JSON, polymers and JS frameworks. But if you look carefully and remove the syntax, architecture parts, the narrative is the same. And with the narratives of the battle and its scars, the Web Components sound very familiar to the Coupound Document Format.
Still by Chris
When it comes to componentising the web, the rabbit hole is deep and also a maze.
Note that not everything was lost from WICD. It helped develop a couple of things, and reimagine the platform. Stay tune, I think we will have surprises on this story. Not over yet.
Modularity has already a couple of scars when thinking about large distribution. Remember Opendoc and OLE. I still remember using Cyberdog. Fun times.
Otsukare!