JS Party: JavaScript, CSS, Web Development · Changelog Media

From Shoelace to Web Awesome

May 9, 2024·1 hr 8 min·2 clips

Corey LaViska discusses Shoelace, a web components library he created, and its evolution into Web Awesome as part of the Font Awesome family. Shoelace began as a Bootstrap alternative focused on CSS custom properties for easy theming without build steps. The library evolved to use web components when IE 11 support ended, enabling framework-agnostic UI components. Companies were maintaining separate design systems for Angular, Vue, React, and vanilla JavaScript teams, creating massive duplication of effort. Web components solved this by providing custom HTML elements that work across all frameworks. Shoelace now has over 50 components and receives 657 million monthly hits on JS Deliver. As of May 2024, 17% of Chrome page views registered web component usage, indicating widespread adoption beyond tech Twitter perception. Font Awesome co-founder Dave Gandy contacted LaViska via Twitter DM, leading to partnership discussions in Bentonville. The companies aligned on building a sustainable open source and commercial design system product. A Kickstarter campaign launched with a $30,000 goal but raised $720,000 from early backers. The date picker component became a symbolic stretch goal driving additional funding since developers universally want to avoid building that component. Web Awesome will maintain separate free and pro tiers, with the free tier adding 14 new components from Kickstarter stretch goals. Premium features include a visual themer for brand customization, data grids, and charting libraries that compete with standalone paid products like AG Grid and Highcharts. The team now consists of four full-time developers working on web standards-based components. LaViska emphasizes the separation between component functionality and appearance, enabling consistent user experiences across websites while supporting custom theming. The conversation maintains technical depth while discussing business sustainability and community dynamics. Jessica Janiuk from the Stencil team provides context about design system architecture and Brad Frost's comprehensive design system ecosystem framework. The show suits web developers interested in design systems, component libraries, web standards, and framework-agnostic development approaches.

As heard by us

A rebrand discussion that keeps the focus on the practical details developers care about.

JS Party spends this hour on a web-dev transition, with Shoelace becoming Web Awesome and Corey LaVisca laying out the rebrand, the split between the projects, and why the new name fits.

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You want the story behind Shoelace's rebrand into Web Awesome.

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