Polymer 2 support, more components, and theming support
These are exciting times for Web developers. More and more browsers have shipped native support for Web Components, allowing us to rely less on polyfills and finally realize the full potential of Web Components. You might have seen that Google released a new Polymer-based version of Youtube a couple weeks ago. Several other large companies like General Electric and McDonald's have also showcased production applications built with Web Components. We're finally seeing Web Components move from "cool future technology" to something that's running business critical apps and sites for large companies.
Announcing Polymer 2 support
One of the major highlights of Google I/O 2017 is the release of Polymer 2.0. This new version of Polymer is both faster and more interoperable than before because it is able to use browser native Web Component implementations and new ECMAScript features.
Vaadin Elements is being updated to support Polymer 2.0, with the most elements already offering hybrid support (works both with Polymer 1 and 2). We are working to add support for the remaining components within the next few weeks. You can follow the implementation status on our GitHub repo or browse the components at vaadin.com/elements.
Looking ahead – building a cohesive, themeable set of components for the next generation of Web apps
While Web Components as a technology has matured, the ecosystem is still young. When it comes to cohesive component sets, Polymer's Paper Elements is still the gold standard. When we started building Vaadin Elements, we understood that it would take us some time to get a complete enough set of components to allow our users to build complete applications. That's why we designed the first iteration to work as an extension to the Polymer Paper Elements set.
One of the most common issues we hear from our users is that the Paper Element set and our components follow Material design and that they want their project to follow their own design. That's why we are evolving Vaadin Elements into a stand-alone set Web Components that you can easily theme to match the look and feel of your organization.
The theming support will allow you to easily customize the look and feel of all Vaadin Elements with CSS custom properties and standard CSS.
Roadmap
Building a new set of components is no small task, especially when you pay as much attention to detail, quality, and accessibility as we do. Getting the entire set of components completed will take some time. Our plan is to work from most commonly used components to more specific use case components. The goal is to have a set of components that is on par with and then going beyond the Vaadin Framework's current set of components. By starting with the most common components, we can cover the majority of use cases as soon as possible.
The roadmap below outlines our current priorities and schedule. We'll keep you updated on progress and show demos as soon as we have something that's ready enough for you to start trying out and giving feedback on.
May
- vaadin-button
- vaadin-text-field
- vaadin-form layout
June – July
- vaadin-list-box
- vaadin-dialog
- vaadin-dropdown-menu
August – October
- Theming support for all components
- vaadin-text-area
- vaadin-checkbox
Later
- vaadin-menu-button
- vaadin-progress
- vaadin-details
- vaadin-radio-button
- vaadin-slider
- vaadin-spinner
- vaadin-tabs
- vaadin-tab
- vaadin-toggle-button
What do you want to see next?
Although we have a clear vision of what we want to build next, we welcome all your comments and suggestions. Are there specific components or features you'd like us to add? Reach out to us on Twitter, Gitter for a chat, or file an issue on GitHub for enhancements you'd like to see.