Chapter 15. Hiding your complexities
This chapter covers
- Using A-Frame to create a VR-enabled immersive scene
- Using Google’s model-viewer component to preview 3D models onscreen and in AR
- Manipulating a live camera feed with WebGL
- Using Babylon.js to create a 3D scene component
- Tracking your hands with Tensorflow.js via handtrack.js
While this book is coming to a close, Web Components are really just getting started. It took a while to create their foundations and even longer to get browser support, but all the same, the last of the modern browsers (Microsoft Edge) is on the verge of full support.
The path to get here was a bit fraught with obstacles and dead ends at times. We’ve seen a few features come and go. Among the deprecated was HTML Imports, which somewhat coincided with the deprecation of the Polymer Library, the first Web Components library. I’m sure this wasn’t coincidental, as the Polymer Library was heavily influenced by HTML Imports as a starting point for every new Web Component.
It was sad to see HTML Imports go away, but that’s just how it goes when working on a web standard with stakeholders from multiple browser vendors. As much as I love using JS modules and template literals within to hold HTML and CSS, it’s not a perfect solution for everyone. For me, as a developer, it’s great, but not everyone likes HTML and CSS inside JS.