4 ms·

Been a little while since posting one of my own pieces on here, but have been hoping to get some discussion going about these new techniques that are popping up

Been a little while since posting one of my own pieces on here, but have been hoping to get some discussion going about these new techniques that are popping up inspired by Elixir Phoenix's LiveView. Freshness in a field that has been pretty stagnant lately (server-based web apps). Since writing the blog post I found out that there's another competing framework that might realize the design goals I'm describing in succint, self-contained fashion: https://github.com/unabridged/motion https://github.com/unabridged/motion

kfk 6y ago
I can’t read your article as Medium says I reached my quota. I manage an analytics team and I am pretty annoyed with most dashboard tool out there (Tableau, PowerBI, etc), so I have been extending our internal python grizly library with server side components built as python classes and rendered “reactively” using htmx. The idea being that my team could easily build scalable server rendered apps from Jupyter notebooks. Most analytics requires server anyway to for instance do Excel extracts or in memory data transformations. It’s been an amazing discovery of simple but powerful patterns and it’s working. My question is why is this not more popular? Maybe I am doing something wrong?
- recursivedoubts 6y ago
  >My question is why is this not more popular? I have no idea. > Maybe I am doing something wrong? You are doing nothing wrong.
- obiefernandez 6y ago
  You can open any Medium article in an incognito window. It's not a very secure paywall.
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    That seems like a funky workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist. I have some stuff on Medium, but when I find time to port it over to Bridgetown or similar, I will.
    - obiefernandez 6y ago
      Why shouldn't I take some of the money that Medium has raised from their VCs?
  - austinpena 6y ago
    And blocking cookies on Medium works.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  > My question is why is this not more popular? Resume driven development is a real problem in our industry.
  - kfk 6y ago
    I was thinking 2 things could be better done with react: reactivity and server load due to more client requests to manage. Not sure what else. Server load is pretty high on Tableau too so not sure that’s a real problem.
recursivedoubts 6y ago
My take: the fundamental problem is that HTML was never completed as a hypertext. - Why should only anchors and forms be able to make HTTP requests? - Why should only click and submit events trigger them? - Why should only GETs and sometimes POSTs be available? - Why should you have to replace the entire screen every time? htmx tries to complete HTML as a hypertext, removing each of these limitations, so you can write advanced interfaces using plain ol' markup: https://htmx.org https://htmx.org
- digitaltrees 6y ago
  I love it
- obiefernandez 6y ago
  This looks super interesting, thanks for posting. Can't help but wonder how much cooler it would be if only the attributes were not hx- namespaced. Is that not done for some technical reason?
  - recursivedoubts 6y ago
    I just followed other frameworks on it, feels a little presumptuous and dangerous to use unqualified top level attributes. I could make it pluggable so you could do away with the hx- if you wanted to. Most people want to go the other way and use data- prefixes (which is supported out of the box)
- imtringued 6y ago
  I always am irritated when people insist on disabling javascript. The fundamental problem is that HTML on its own is flawed and unusable. Even the most basic features that users expect will require a few lines of javascript. Half of the webapps I make are just digitalizing existing paper forms. There is barely any javascript but the javascript that is there is absolutely essential. If the noscript warriors actually thought about ways of making plain HTML good enough that a JS free site was possible then I'd have sympathy for them. As it is right now they are asking the impossible. They would even complain about htmx even though it is exactly what they want.
chmaynard 6y ago
I'm surprised that someone with your technical sophistication is hosting their blog on a platform like Medium. Yuck!

kfk 6y ago

I can’t read your article as Medium says I reached my quota. I manage an analytics team and I am pretty annoyed with most dashboard tool out there (Tableau, PowerBI, etc), so I have been extending our internal python grizly library with server side components built as python classes and rendered “reactively” using htmx. The idea being that my team could easily build scalable server rendered apps from Jupyter notebooks. Most analytics requires server anyway to for instance do Excel extracts or in memory data transformations. It’s been an amazing discovery of simple but powerful patterns and it’s working. My question is why is this not more popular? Maybe I am doing something wrong?

recursivedoubts 6y ago
>My question is why is this not more popular? I have no idea. > Maybe I am doing something wrong? You are doing nothing wrong.
obiefernandez 6y ago
You can open any Medium article in an incognito window. It's not a very secure paywall.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  That seems like a funky workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist. I have some stuff on Medium, but when I find time to port it over to Bridgetown or similar, I will.
  - obiefernandez 6y ago
    Why shouldn't I take some of the money that Medium has raised from their VCs?
- austinpena 6y ago
  And blocking cookies on Medium works.
bdcravens 6y ago
> My question is why is this not more popular? Resume driven development is a real problem in our industry.
- kfk 6y ago
  I was thinking 2 things could be better done with react: reactivity and server load due to more client requests to manage. Not sure what else. Server load is pretty high on Tableau too so not sure that’s a real problem.

recursivedoubts 6y ago

My take: the fundamental problem is that HTML was never completed as a hypertext. - Why should only anchors and forms be able to make HTTP requests? - Why should only click and submit events trigger them? - Why should only GETs and sometimes POSTs be available? - Why should you have to replace the entire screen every time? htmx tries to complete HTML as a hypertext, removing each of these limitations, so you can write advanced interfaces using plain ol' markup: https://htmx.org https://htmx.org

digitaltrees 6y ago
I love it
obiefernandez 6y ago
This looks super interesting, thanks for posting. Can't help but wonder how much cooler it would be if only the attributes were not hx- namespaced. Is that not done for some technical reason?
- recursivedoubts 6y ago
  I just followed other frameworks on it, feels a little presumptuous and dangerous to use unqualified top level attributes. I could make it pluggable so you could do away with the hx- if you wanted to. Most people want to go the other way and use data- prefixes (which is supported out of the box)
imtringued 6y ago
I always am irritated when people insist on disabling javascript. The fundamental problem is that HTML on its own is flawed and unusable. Even the most basic features that users expect will require a few lines of javascript. Half of the webapps I make are just digitalizing existing paper forms. There is barely any javascript but the javascript that is there is absolutely essential. If the noscript warriors actually thought about ways of making plain HTML good enough that a JS free site was possible then I'd have sympathy for them. As it is right now they are asking the impossible. They would even complain about htmx even though it is exactly what they want.

chmaynard 6y ago

I'm surprised that someone with your technical sophistication is hosting their blog on a platform like Medium. Yuck!