Re: [shadow dom] relitigation

Hi Brian,

The WebKit team has given a lot of feedback over the years on the Shadow DOM spec.  We wouldn't have done that if we didn't care about it. :)  We're excited to hear that Mozilla is planning to give more feedback on Custom Elements and Shadow DOM because we feel that much of their feedback resonates with us.

Having said that, our feedback has largely been dismissed or has not been adequately addressed.  I'm sure you can imagine that this does not encourage us to invest much more time or effort into providing additional feedback.

- R. Niwa

On Dec 17, 2014, at 12:55 PM, Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com> wrote:

> I hate to tear open a wound, but it seems to me that two important browser vendors have yet to buy into Shadow DOM.  It's currently listed by Microsoft as "under consideration" but the sense I get is that the signal isn't very positive right now.  Firefox is planning to move forward, Blink has it unprefixed.
> 
> Things like document.register can be polyfilled fairly well and without too much crazy.  If imports is controversial or we determine that we need more experimentation to figure out "what's down there" in terms of other systems like modules or fetch - we can do a lot of those experiments outside any browser implementation too and use it to lead discussions.  I am all for that, especially if we can lead the way in getting vendors to cooperate on the polyfills and make some efforts to find future safe ways to do this.
> 
> But Shadow DOM - this is a different story.  It might not be a fundamental primitive or DNA level thing, but it's well down there and actually impossible to polyfill accurately and it is dark, dark magic requiring lots of code to even fake it reasonably well.  There's a real risk there is that the fidelity could actually cause problems when you jump to native too, I think.
> 
> There seems to be a pretty large split in sentiment on Shadow DOM, or perceived sentiment from developers.  From my perspective, a whole lot of people tell me that they find Shadow DOM one of the most compelling pieces of custom elements and without it, they're holding off.  Another thing they tell me that frustrates them is that this makes it hard to share custom elements - should they assume a Shadow DOM or not.
> 
> With Mozilla's post the other day[1] this has opened up a whole lot of new conversations on my part and the preeminent question seems to be whether there will be a positive signal from Apple or Microsoft or whether we need to consider that as good as vapor for now.  For a lot of orgs, consideration of switching to custom element and their plan for the next few years is probably affected, as well as the state of the landscape and where we will be shaping it.
> 
> With this in mind, I'm asking if anyone is willing to tip their hand at all - even to the effect that "if we get two interoperable, unprefixed versions, we will follow"... Any information I think is helpful - and asking the question at least might move the conversation forward again (I hope)?
> 
> 
> 
> 1 - https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/12/mozilla-and-web-components/
> 
> -- 
> Brian Kardell :: @briankardell :: hitchjs.com