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Web Components: The Future of Web Development

BtoPro once said, "In 2019 the web created the foundation for what will be looked back on as a 2000 year leap forward in development capabilities." He was talking about web components.

In many ways, web components are fundamentally shaping the ways in which the web development community thinks about code. Web components are a set of Javascript APIs that allows custom HTML tags that can be reused across all web pages and web apps that can be interpreted by all browsers. In other words, it is a standard way we can share and used everyone's complex code without compatibility issues. It is predicated on the, "use it once, use it everywhere" philosophy.

What makes web components fundamentally appealing to developers? The core reason is that it's built on existing web standards. This means it doesn't rely on front end frameworks like React or Angular that are large and opinionated. In other words, web components will work on any website.

One of the most important aspects of web components that developers are starting to paying attention too with web components is style reusability. Web components make it easier to brand companies because it reuses code. For example, a university can create a web header using web components and reuse that same header or footer throughout all of their websites and pages. This saves in numerous time and money for organizations and developers. For instance, Brigham Young University utilizes web components for their sites and maintain a sense of brand uniformity across all of their sites, as well as countless other companies such as Xfinity, EA Sports, and YouTube.

Time efficiency is another crucial aspect that makes web components so appealing. For example, Vaadin is an open-source Javascript framework that offers a headless experience that cuts back on development. Using this Vaadin grid can help developers create a stylish prototype within hours, in comparison to what use to take them months to develop.

Web components are also going to be changing the mobile development as well. Progressive web apps take existing web applications and allow their code to be experienced like a mobile application. As the mobile development community shifts its focus to progressive web apps, web components development could potentially garner an even stronger focus as its components will be reused by developers.

In conclusion, businesses can benefit from this because of its design consistency and ground-breaking implications for future-use as the business landscape constantly changes.

YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/UD7NHv1Mcuc

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