Comment by spankalee
11 hours ago
I'm sorry, this a dumb comment that has no basis in reality.
HTML Imports was part of the initial set of the web components specs, there's no "cabal" or whatever that got its hands on it, and it didn't rely on JavaScript, not in the way you're probably referring to.
It was only opposed because it was separate from the JS module system, not because it relied on JS.
It's replacement: The HTML Modules proposal has general support from all vendors, just no one has put together a complete proposal yet.
It was rejected because it needed JS to even work.
This is simply not true, both in how it worked and why it was rejected.
HTML Imports didn't need JS to work: they used link tags and could transitively import HTML files without any JS.
You only needed JS because the wasn't anything you could do with the HTML yet because declarative custom elements don't exist yet.
HTML Imports were rejected because they created a parallel module graph to the JS module graph.
I think they could have been made to share the same graph, but that's basically what HTML modules are anyway.