I basically use HTMX for all my Web Apps, including PWA(s) that run as ~near native apps on iOS/Android. It's great! I aso pair this with DaisyUI+TailwindCSS. YOu really can't go wrong, there is something quite pleasant about writing your web apps in ordinary HTML with partials and the extensions that HTMX adds to the browser for SPA-like interactivity.
snorremd 5 minutes ago [-]
I think HTMX is a great fit for forum software. Forum websites mostly deliver non-interactive content in the form of text and maybe some audio, video, or image content. All of this can be represented as HTML and CSS.
With HTMX you can do partial rendering and live updates via server-sent events. This gets you most of the way to the "client side" feel where things load dynamically based on user actions.
The only properly dynamic SPA-like feature in a forum I can think of is a WYSIWYG editor, but that you can build as a web component. Maybe a flexible highlight and quote system would be a bit difficult in pure HTMX (think of the comment functionality in Medium posts). So you'd want to build a few things in client side JS. But the main experience could very well be built with HTMX.
sgt 1 hours ago [-]
Happy they did this. Htmx is a great fit for server rendering - which in many or most cases is what you should do in any case. You can always put a mini VueJS or ReactJS app inside of a template for a very custom interactivity.
skeptic_ai 18 minutes ago [-]
That’s basically a massive hack. Every real world app will need enough js that htmx will require you to put js on front end and you’ll need to hack it together. Just like we did php+js 15 years ago.
asdfsa32 7 minutes ago [-]
But it is different this time, we are going back to HTML! /s
asdfsa32 52 minutes ago [-]
Putting ReactJS or VueJS for a little interactivity is hardly the correct approach. It makes no sense to bring them in for "a little". What made React and React-like (Angular v2, Vue.js) frameworks stabilise is that they're about the right abstractions and everything else for managing dynamic html converges to about the same thing.
sgt 38 minutes ago [-]
In principle I agree that putting React or Vue in for a little interactivity is a bad approach, if the same can be achieved with Htmx, which it usually can.
However for some really complex mini apps, that's another story. But for the rest of those CRUD pages, you can go simple server side rendered.
asdfsa32 37 minutes ago [-]
"Complex mini app" is one hell of a concept.
skydhash 20 minutes ago [-]
It can be. Think something like a file viewer or a text editor, or a music players. You can probably make do with vanilla javascript, but there’s some threshold where using react to take care of the state<=>ui relationship is worth it.
asdfsa32 16 minutes ago [-]
A text editor or music player is hardly "mini".
Again, the issue with htmx is that it pretends like it is not a framework, when in fact, it is just a second attempt at angular 1.0, with even more naive assumptions about web apps.
But on serious note, htmx is basically a solution in the search of a problem. It is the new hype.
Or rather, a solution that overlooks 2 decades of learnings. Yes, for a small set of projects htmx is okay, but even then, where htmx is ideal, static is king, and once static is not good enough, htmx sooner or later starts to feel like the XAML and BPEL soap.
The fundamental problem is that it is pretending to be a declarative language while entirely imperative.
xutopia 33 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like you never worked on complex HTMX systems. They're easier to maintain, allow for easy caching of HTML fragments in a page. For higher traffic pages React just fails spectacularly.
asdfsa32 25 minutes ago [-]
How does React fail for high traffic pages? It is amazing that you would suggest I don't understand HTMX "systems" and then go make such assertion.
I have been writing frontends since early 2000. So I have seen it all, from activex being shinny to jquery, mootools, backbonejs, angular 1.0, php, Java Spring, Go. I looked into htmx and it is very much a second attempt at angular 1.0, which I did use for some good half decade as that was the best option at the time, but sooner or later, you get sick of stuffing "little codelets" inside attributes all over the place, which is exactly what htmx does.
If you want to understand what htmx is going to look like at scale, look at angular 1.0 projects.
wild_egg 13 minutes ago [-]
As someone who wrote a lot of angular back in the day, and who writes a lot of htmx in the current day... That comparison makes absolutely no sense.
The only thing the 2 have in common is the use of HTML attributes for functionality. Completely different on every other axis that matters.
asdfsa32 4 minutes ago [-]
It is different in that some of what happened on the frontend now happens in the backend, but overall, it is the exact same approach, so as I said in a sibling comment, it, it is just a second attempt at angular 1.0 with even more naive assumptions about web.
bcrosby95 31 minutes ago [-]
For what it's worth, your last statement is why react always felt off to me.
dajonker 46 minutes ago [-]
This feels like an uninformed, generalized opinion from someone with zero experience on the topic. Have you even used HTMX or a similar approach?
Besides the memes, it is absolutely not hype-driven, but hypermedia driven. It asks the question: could HTML be even more powerful than it already is?
The creators of HTMX even want to standardize core ideas of HTMX into the official HTML specification: https://triptychproject.org/ Please read this and reply when you still think it's hype.
asdfsa32 29 minutes ago [-]
I have been writing frontends since early 2000. So I have seen it all, from activex being shinny to jquery, mootools, backbonejs, angular 1.0, php, Java Spring, Go.
Hypermedia is what to web apps what XML is to programming languages. We have tried HTMX as a concept many times over, there is nothing new here, and like everything declarative, sooner or later it will fall short and you're going to reach for escape hatches and what not.
And the features specified in that project is nice to have, in the same way that it is nice that we have Date Pickers or other advanced input features, but it is never going to replace React-like frameworks.
Again, the reason we have finally stabilised on JSX is because you can't really "Declare" away HTML or sophisticated data and event management, Google really really tried that with Angular 1.0, and we know it doesn't scale.
Rendered at 13:24:17 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
With HTMX you can do partial rendering and live updates via server-sent events. This gets you most of the way to the "client side" feel where things load dynamically based on user actions.
The only properly dynamic SPA-like feature in a forum I can think of is a WYSIWYG editor, but that you can build as a web component. Maybe a flexible highlight and quote system would be a bit difficult in pure HTMX (think of the comment functionality in Medium posts). So you'd want to build a few things in client side JS. But the main experience could very well be built with HTMX.
However for some really complex mini apps, that's another story. But for the rest of those CRUD pages, you can go simple server side rendered.
Again, the issue with htmx is that it pretends like it is not a framework, when in fact, it is just a second attempt at angular 1.0, with even more naive assumptions about web apps.
But on serious note, htmx is basically a solution in the search of a problem. It is the new hype.
Or rather, a solution that overlooks 2 decades of learnings. Yes, for a small set of projects htmx is okay, but even then, where htmx is ideal, static is king, and once static is not good enough, htmx sooner or later starts to feel like the XAML and BPEL soap.
The fundamental problem is that it is pretending to be a declarative language while entirely imperative.
I have been writing frontends since early 2000. So I have seen it all, from activex being shinny to jquery, mootools, backbonejs, angular 1.0, php, Java Spring, Go. I looked into htmx and it is very much a second attempt at angular 1.0, which I did use for some good half decade as that was the best option at the time, but sooner or later, you get sick of stuffing "little codelets" inside attributes all over the place, which is exactly what htmx does.
If you want to understand what htmx is going to look like at scale, look at angular 1.0 projects.
The only thing the 2 have in common is the use of HTML attributes for functionality. Completely different on every other axis that matters.
Besides the memes, it is absolutely not hype-driven, but hypermedia driven. It asks the question: could HTML be even more powerful than it already is?
The creators of HTMX even want to standardize core ideas of HTMX into the official HTML specification: https://triptychproject.org/ Please read this and reply when you still think it's hype.
Hypermedia is what to web apps what XML is to programming languages. We have tried HTMX as a concept many times over, there is nothing new here, and like everything declarative, sooner or later it will fall short and you're going to reach for escape hatches and what not.
And the features specified in that project is nice to have, in the same way that it is nice that we have Date Pickers or other advanced input features, but it is never going to replace React-like frameworks.
Again, the reason we have finally stabilised on JSX is because you can't really "Declare" away HTML or sophisticated data and event management, Google really really tried that with Angular 1.0, and we know it doesn't scale.