Cory LaViskaIt’s been three years since I broke ground on Shoelace 2.0. Between then and now, the project has amassed over 300 million monthly hits on jsDelivr and as of today, it is jsDelivr’s 73rd most popular project. And that was just the beta version.
Today, I’m happy to announce that the first stable release of Shoelace is finally here!!
For those unfamiliar, Shoelace is a free, open source library of Web Components you can use to build websites and web applications. There are over 50 accessible, handcrafted user interface components to choose from, and you can use them in any framework you want!
First and foremost, I’d like to say thank you to all my users. I’ve poured my heart and soul into this library, and am thrilled to see so many people building with it. You continue to inspire me every day!
Why Choose Web Components?
Web Components are built using Web Standards, meaning they don’t require a framework. You can think of them as custom HTML elements because that’s exactly what they are!
And because they’re just HTML elements, you can use them in any framework you want, such as React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Solid, and more. This makes Web Components a great candidate for your next design system! In fact, Shoelace acts as a design system starter kit, allowing you to customize it to suit your needs.
Shoelace is built with accessibility in mind and comes with both light and dark themes out of the box. Why spend months building UI primitives (i.e., buttons, dialogs, form controls, tabs, etc.)? Now you can get dozens of battle-tested components and start building with them right now!
Are you new to Web Components and curious to learn more? This article on the Shoelace site is a great place to start!
What’s Next
While this release is a major milestone for Shoelace, we’re still just getting started. There’s always more to do, like adding more features, doing more tests, and adding more polish. And with the support of the amazing folks at Font Awesome, we’re going to deliver an incredible amount of value in the coming year.
Sorry, no spoilers! But you’ll be hearing a lot about Shoelace as we continue our journey to become everyone’s favorite open source Web Component library.
Before I go, I’d like to share some interesting stats about this release!
Shoelace 2.0 in Numbers
Development of Shoelace 2.0 started in January 2020. The first beta was released on July 15, 2020. Since then, Shoelace has grown quite a bit! Here’s a look at some stats from the project.*
- 55 components have been built
- Over 2,500 commits have been made to the project
- 85 people have contributed to the project
- 669 issues have been filed on GitHub
- 274 pull requests have been opened
- More than 150 discussions have been started on GitHub
- Over 500 people have joined the Shoelace community on Discord
- Over 300 million CDN hits per month
- Over 13,000 npm downloads per week
- 73rd most popular project on jsDelivr
- #2 product of the day on Product Hunt (July 25, 2020)
*Stats recorded on January 24, 2023
Special Thanks
I would like to extend a very special thank you to every single contributor who worked to make this possible. Everyone who’s filed a bug, submitted a PR, requested a feature, started a discussion, helped with testing, and advocated for the project. You are just as responsible for Shoelace’s success as I am. I’d also like to thank the folks at Font Awesome for recognizing Shoelace’s potential and believing in me to make it happen.
Thank you! And keep building awesome stuff!
