Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Reducing complexity with a Component API
Search
Ianfeather
April 25, 2014
0
200
Reducing complexity with a Component API
Ianfeather
April 25, 2014
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Ianfeather
See All by Ianfeather
Building Resilient Front End Systems (Smashingconf)
ianfeather
0
120
Building Resilient Frontend Systems (All Day Hey)
ianfeather
1
530
Building Resilient Frontend Systems (@frontendne)
ianfeather
1
200
Testing Without Assertions
ianfeather
0
140
Building Resilient Frontend Systems - NationJS
ianfeather
0
210
Establishing Performance Contexts
ianfeather
0
130
Web Fonts and Performance
ianfeather
0
230
Featured
See All Featured
Improving Core Web Vitals using Speculation Rules API
sergeychernyshev
21
1.3k
brightonSEO & MeasureFest 2025 - Christian Goodrich - Winning strategies for Black Friday CRO & PPC
cargoodrich
2
77
Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design
aarron
274
41k
Prompt Engineering for Job Search
mfonobong
0
140
Jamie Indigo - Trashchat’s Guide to Black Boxes: Technical SEO Tactics for LLMs
techseoconnect
PRO
0
34
Testing 201, or: Great Expectations
jmmastey
46
7.8k
Building Applications with DynamoDB
mza
96
6.9k
Understanding Cognitive Biases in Performance Measurement
bluesmoon
32
2.8k
4 Signs Your Business is Dying
shpigford
187
22k
Avoiding the “Bad Training, Faster” Trap in the Age of AI
tmiket
0
43
A better future with KSS
kneath
240
18k
Evolution of real-time – Irina Nazarova, EuRuKo, 2024
irinanazarova
9
1.1k
Transcript
Reducing Complexity with a Component API Ian Feather
Complexity
High risk, high fear
Intertwined
Low reuse
Technical debt
! Complexity at " ";
None
This time we’ll nail it
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC HOTELS The rebuild
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC High Reuse Low Reuse HOTELS
The rebuild
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC High Reuse Strong Caching Low
Reuse Weak Caching HOTELS The rebuild
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC High Reuse Strong Caching High
Risk Low Reuse Weak Caching Low Risk HOTELS The rebuild
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC HOTELS PLACES SEARCH THEME High
Reuse Strong Caching High Risk Low Reuse Weak Caching Low Risk The rebuild
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC HOTELS PLACES SEARCH THEME High
Reuse Strong Caching High Risk Low Reuse Weak Caching Low Risk The rebuild
HTML CSS JS SHARED SPECIFIC HOTELS PLACES SEARCH THEME High
Reuse Strong Caching High Risk Low Reuse Weak Caching Low Risk The rebuild
This model doesn’t favour the front end
We need a different solution
None
It should feel as easy as working on a small
site
A Style Guide would help, right?
/* Styleguide [Buttons] ! <button class=“btn-primary”>Button</button> <button class=“btn-secondary”>Button</button> ! */
! .btn—primary { background: blue; } ! .btn—secondary { background: red; }
None
A Style Guide isn’t the mechanism
We need to decouple our UI Layer from the application
Component Layer & API
What is a component?
Create an API to standardise fetching these components
None
= component(“form/search”, { label: search })
<form action="/search"> <label class="accessibility" for="search-q">Search</label> <input id="search-q" name="q" tabindex="1" type=“search"/>
<button name="search-q-submit" type="submit">Search</button> </form> = component(“form/search”, { label: search })
None
component(“input/search”, { label: search, autocomplete: true })
<form action="/search"> <label class="accessibility" for="search-q">Search</label> <input class="js-autocomplete" id="search-q" name=“q" />
<button name="search-q-submit" type="submit">Search</button> <div class="js-autocomplete-container"></div> </form> component(“input/search”, { label: search, autocomplete: true })
None
component("cards/collection_card", { double?: true, slug: "/top-things-to-do—in-paris", title: "Top
things to do in Paris", image_url: "/assets/paris.jpg" })
None
None
SPECIFIC Low Risk Low Reuse HOTELS PLACES SEARCH THEME HTML
CSS JS SHARED High Risk High Reuse
SPECIFIC Low Risk Low Reuse HOTELS PLACES SEARCH THEME HTML
CSS JS SHARED High Risk High Reuse Low Risk High Reuse Component Layer & API
Rizzo ! Component Layer, API & Style Guide
Our Style Guide can be just another data-driven application
A ready-made visual regression test suite
Enables Style Guide driven development
None
None
Why would you want to use a Component API?
You’ll have happier developers
You’ll have visual consistency
You’ll be able to refactor easily
You won’t have to tweak padding values (as much)
It can feel like working on a small site
Thank you @ianfeather http://rizzo.lonelyplanet.com