Web Components
Web Components are a set of web platform APIs that allow developers to create reusable, encapsulated custom HTML elements with their own functionality and styling. They consist of three main technologies: Custom Elements for defining new HTML tags, Shadow DOM for encapsulating style and markup, and HTML Templates for declaring reusable chunks of HTML. This enables building modular, framework-agnostic UI components that work across modern browsers.
Developers should learn Web Components when building reusable UI elements that need to work independently of any JavaScript framework, ensuring long-term maintainability and interoperability in large-scale applications. They are particularly useful for design systems, micro-frontends, and embedding third-party widgets, as they provide native browser support without external dependencies. This makes them ideal for projects requiring cross-framework compatibility or where framework lock-in is a concern.