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Step back, and think about the fact that in 2026, the most regarded news site in tech is featuring a tool to build the simplest of UI elements.
Yes, finally someone else that gets it. Shadow DOM is a misfeature. Being able to customize things with external CSS is a feature of the web, not a bug.
I've found out about this and datastar * in the last 2 days. I'm getting confused about what these light frameworks/libraries are doing that I need over vanilla js. Also how do these compare to the last round of light frameworks like solid and svelte?

I'm on board with reducing the need to port to and from different frameworks. I also agree that we should try to avoid depending on npm for everything.

* https://github.com/starfederation/datastar

One big difference between Datastar/HTMX and Solid/Svelte etc is the first two put almost all the logic in the backend, and the latter ones are SPA frameworks. Very different architecture. Backend rendering used to mean clunky experience but with Datastar’s SSE approach you can get better than SPA experience with a simpler mental model.