Call it HTMLX or call it Hijax, what matters isn’t the code so much as the idea:
Front-end JavaScript fatigue is real. I’m guilty myself of over-engineering JS UI despite preferring good old server templates. I don’t even think HTMX is that good but the philosophy behind it embarrasses the modern JavaScript developer. For that I appreciate it very much.
It sounds like Remix takes a sensible approach to progressive enhancement.
I really like the progressive enhancement approach that this little library uses—it’s basically the Hijax approach I was talking about back in the days of Bulletproof Ajax but all wrapped up into a neat package that you can use entirely via HTML attributes.
This is great! The folks at Basecamp are releasing the front-end frameworks they use to build Hey. There’s Turbo—the successor to Turbolinks:
It offers a simpler alternative to the prevailing client-side frameworks which put all the logic in the front-end and confine the server side of your app to being little more than a JSON API.
With Turbo, you let the server deliver HTML directly, which means all the logic for checking permissions, interacting directly with your domain model, and everything else that goes into programming an application can happen more or less exclusively within your favorite programming language. You’re no longer mirroring logic on both sides of a JSON divide. All the logic lives on the server, and the browser deals just with the final HTML.
Yes, this is basically Hijax (which is itself simply a name for progressive enhancement applied to Ajax) and I’m totally fine with that. I don’t care what it’s called when the end result is faster, more resilient websites.
Compare and contrast the simplicity of the Hotwire/Turbo approach to the knots that React is tying itself up in to try to get the same performance benefits.
I really, really like the approach that this JavaScript library is taking in treating Ajax as a progressive enhancement:
Turbolinks intercepts all clicks on
a hreflinks to the same domain. When you click an eligible link, Turbolinks prevents the browser from following it. Instead, Turbolinks changes the browser’s URL using the History API, requests the new page usingXMLHttpRequest, and then renders the HTML response.During rendering, Turbolinks replaces the current
bodyelement outright and merges the contents of theheadelement. The JavaScriptwindowanddocumentobjects, and the HTMLhtmlelement, persist from one rendering to the next.
Here’s the mustard it’s cutting:
It depends on the HTML5 History API and Window.requestAnimationFrame. In unsupported browsers, Turbolinks gracefully degrades to standard navigation.
This approach matches my own mental model for building on the web—I might try playing around with this on some of my projects.
A really nice explanation by Todd Kloots of Twitter’s use of progressive enhancement with Ajax and the HTML5 History API. There’s even a shout for Hijax in there.
Remy teaches non-techies how to use jQuery in a responsible way.
The Spry framework from Adobe looks like it could be worth further investigation. I certainly like the underlying philosophy: lightweight, standards-based, and declarative.
Cameron shares his thoughts on Ajax, Hijax, libraries and having fun.
Garret gives an excellent, excellent round-up of the factors involved in the behaviour layer of front-end architecture (that's 'building websites' to you and me).
The slides of the Hijax talk from the Ajax Developer's Day at XTech 2006 in Amsterdam.