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
Sponsored
·
Your Podcast. Everywhere. Effortlessly.
Share. Educate. Inspire. Entertain. You do you. We'll handle the rest.
→
Ianfeather
April 25, 2014
210
0
Share
Reducing complexity with a Component API
Ianfeather
April 25, 2014
More Decks by Ianfeather
See All by Ianfeather
Building Resilient Front End Systems (Smashingconf)
ianfeather
0
140
Building Resilient Frontend Systems (All Day Hey)
ianfeather
1
550
Building Resilient Frontend Systems (@frontendne)
ianfeather
1
210
Testing Without Assertions
ianfeather
0
150
Building Resilient Frontend Systems - NationJS
ianfeather
0
210
Establishing Performance Contexts
ianfeather
0
130
Web Fonts and Performance
ianfeather
0
240
Featured
See All Featured
Why You Should Never Use an ORM
jnunemaker
PRO
61
9.8k
AI Search: Where Are We & What Can We Do About It?
aleyda
0
7.4k
Code Review Best Practice
trishagee
74
20k
The Director’s Chair: Orchestrating AI for Truly Effective Learning
tmiket
1
150
For a Future-Friendly Web
brad_frost
183
10k
Practical Tips for Bootstrapping Information Extraction Pipelines
honnibal
25
1.9k
The Straight Up "How To Draw Better" Workshop
denniskardys
239
140k
Introduction to Domain-Driven Design and Collaborative software design
baasie
1
740
The innovator’s Mindset - Leading Through an Era of Exponential Change - McGill University 2025
jdejongh
PRO
1
160
Gemini Prompt Engineering: Practical Techniques for Tangible AI Outcomes
mfonobong
2
370
Fireside Chat
paigeccino
42
3.9k
<Decoding/> the Language of Devs - We Love SEO 2024
nikkihalliwell
1
190
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