I have been following the development of web-forms keenly - love the idea and implementation!
So it looked like there was a Solid UI library in development, but this has been superseded by a Vue component library, for (I assume) better integration with existing central-frontend code.
A library like this actually seems like a perfect candidate for Web Components, being entirely framework agnostic and embeddable anywhere on the web.
I was wondering if this possibly was considered?
If not, does anyone think this could be a good idea?
I am planning to design a few components myself in Svelte over the coming months, but could equally make them as Web Components via Lit and contribute them.
Yes, we will likely eventually publish one or more custom element or other framework-agnostic way of integrating Web Forms. Here is an issue around that: https://github.com/getodk/web-forms/issues/76 You'll see a PR that does expose a custom element but is a bit hacky and aspirations to come back to it with better infrastructure in place.
The primary driver of that decision is to have a single frontend library used across ODK projects so it's easier to go between them without making mistakes in development. But yes, it also helps with integration!
Did you mean building the Web Forms frontend by composing custom elements instead of using a specific framework's components?
That's also something we briefly considered and in particular looked at leveraging https://github.com/material-components/material-web. We ultimately decided to try to have a somewhat more uniform frontend development experience across Central and Web Forms and to leverage a more mature component library (PrimeVue).
We may eventually provide hooks to define custom question types or appearances but that's not a significant priority.
Yep exactly that! Either building using something like Lit and Tailwind/Uno, or an off the shelf lib like you mentioned. I have been using Shoelace recently and really like it.
And yes, related to web forms! There might be a big push for us to start using web forms soon, particularly for a more seamless user experience by integrating it into our existing UI, but also for iOS support too.
I haven't dug into it yet, but imagine I need to build around the web forms core library, with either Svelte or Lit. May even need a geo element, so will give that some thought too.
