The proselyting over frameworks is the worst bit of the web ecosystem.
If your solution is actually good, it will get adopted eventually...
Forget React, there's still stuff written in jQuery and JSP.
Why the rush to convert everything - you're not a missionary on a mission, just build your stuff in stuff you like?
The attack on npm is ridiculous, when (apart from introducing a permanent vulnerability in the form of a runtime dependency on a third party site), you still need npm for htmx.
> If your solution is actually good, it will get adopted eventually...
I used to believe this when I first started in tech. The truth is even something as seemingly innocent as javascript runtimes now have an incredible amount of money behind them. And sometimes even marketing budgets. Deno released a high-production trailer for their 2.0 release last year
Man I did try htmx, and I was hopeful, right until I saw how it polluted my codebase. I can't say I have the answers, but writing a pure Go app, I'm currently using one giant css file, custom styling and inline html.
And now I'm at the breaking point. So I'm planning to move to tailwind and Go templates, but honestly, i was hopeful for htmx, so I need to properly see the usecase. Which i don't know is this. It reminds me of Angular a lot...
htmx is a great idea, but it's not necessary anymore. We're very close to invokers being baseline (and even that is just an extension of the "composedPath includes -> invoke" pattern), and that will take care of plenty of what htmx was designed to do. Between features like that, and web components, I'm very happy to stick with "plain HTML" (no frameworks; my web components do not draw from a core module or anything).
Also, just a suggestion because it's not technically wrong:
The example of sometimes needing an auto-completing search box is probably not the best one to use. I'm sure it's meant to say "you want the results to be queried from a server/database on every input", which you would certainly need javascript for. But the specific example of just having a search box autocomplete can actually be fulfilled with a datalist element. It won't dynamically re-query results, but it will filter based on input. So it's a muddy example, at best, and that's probably not great for the point trying to be made.
I've had good success with Turbo (previously Turbolinks). The newer versions (ie. Turbo) really fixed up the shortcomings of the older versions (ie. Turbolinks) and I enjoy using it.
Any big reason to use HTMX instead? Is Turbo not really discussed much because of it's association to RoR?
> After the user downloads 2MB of JavaScript, waits for it to parse, waits for it to execute, waits for it to hydrate, waits for it to fetch data, waits for it to render... yes, then subsequent navigations feel snappy. Congratulations.
In my experience, a lot of SPAs transfer more data than the front-end actually needs. One team I worked on was sending 4MB over the wire to render 14kb of actual HTML. (No, there wasn't some processing happening on the front-end that needed the extra data.) And that was using graphql, some dev just plunked all the fields in the graphql query instead of the ones actually needed. I've seen that pattern a lot, although in some cases it's been to my benefit, like finding more details on a tracking website than the UI presented.
I am tired of people using the smallest "Hello World" example to demonstrate how something is better than React -- "See, you don't need all these things to get a website up and running!"
Of course it will work. I can vibe code the most terrible web framework you have seen within 20 minutes and claim it is better than React, but what does it prove?
> You write zero JavaScript
> The whole library is ~14kb gzipped
Oh sure, if there is nothing else in your UI, and if your Python/Go/whatever backend server has 0 dependency, which almost never happens.
The thing is React is usually fine, and even if you don't have to build _this_ thing in React due to simplicity, why bother learning two paradigms when you can just use the heavier one for everything and most likely never encounter any real practical showstopping issue?
If you never seen HTMX it is a small js library that lets you swap some part of your dom with the responses from your webserver.
This means that in theory you (as a dev) don't need (to write any) js, nor do your users need to download a full page (for any interaction) like it's 1999. Your webserver replies with fully server-renderd HTML but just for the dom node (say a div) that you want to replace.
It's fun for very simple things, even great for extremely simple interactions modes. For interactive products, anything beyond simple CRUDs, it's madness.
Whenever you want to sprinkle a tiny bit of interactivity you'll have to choose between the path of least resistance (a small hack on HTMX) or a proper way. State management gets out of control real fast, it's the opposite of UI=f(state).
I've seen it go bad, then worse with alpine-js, and then completely ripped in favor of something where people can let the browser do browser things.
For those who build in Ruby on Rails, does htmx have an advantage over Turbo/Stimulus? For me, the sense that it doesn't is why I've been avoiding it. Prefer to stick with vanilla stack unless there's a very compelling reason not to.
I would even say that even "just html" is enough for most website/app. We've been using "just html" at my company ( rosaly.com) for 5 years, we've raised 10 million, have hundreds of customer, and nobody ever complained. And the Android/Ios applications are 234 lines of React-Native which is just embedding a webview , a bit of error screen when there's no internet connection , and intercom library for notification.
The big problem I have with HTMX is the same one I have with React server components and similar concepts; I really like being able to just serve static files. Plus the clear separation of server and client really makes reasoning about a lot of different problem cases a lot easier, that's not something to dismiss lightly. (It's a bit of a 'ship your org chart' case, though)
Hey, I created htmx and while I appreciate the publicity, I’m not a huge fan of these types of hyperbolic articles. There are lots of different ways to build web apps with their own strengths and weaknesses. I try to assess htmx’s strengths and weaknesses here:
It’s another excellent hypermedia oriented library
Edit: the article is actually not nearly as unreasonable as I thought based on the just-f*king-use template. Still prefer a chill vibe for htmx though.
First - simple use cases sure great. But imagine you have to update some element out of the from tree. Now you need to have OOB swaps and your HTML must contain that fragment.
Not just that your server template code now has to determine if it is HTMX request and only render OOB fragments if so.
Even at decent size app, soon it turns super brittle.
Yet to talk about complicated interfaces. Let's not go complicated just think of variants in an E-commerce admin panel.
3 variants with 5 values each these are 125 SKU rows that must be collapsed group wise.
htmx can do it but it's going to be very very difficult and brittle.
So it is surely very useful but it is NOT the only tool for all use cases.
> Now you need to have OOB swaps and your HTML must contain that fragment.
This is super simple to do if you are using a library to generate HTML in your backend programming language.
> Not just that your server template code now has to determine if it is HTMX request and only render OOB fragments if so.
This is literally just a function that checks for a couple of headers, chooses between two rendering options, and adds a `Vary` response header to take care of the caching. Hardly anything complicated.
> htmx can do it but it's going to be very very difficult and brittle.
The problem with this summary is that it misses the point–htmx is not doing backend stuff, your backend app server is. Htmx is just swapping in what the backend sends.
> it is NOT the only tool for all use cases.
The OP said exactly this, the htmx people have always said this, and no one ever claimed otherwise. There are people out there who don't think in absolute all-or-nothing terms.
To prove the point, author mentions company that went from React to Htmx and saw positive change in relevant metrics. When you do that, it usually means your app has matured in a sense and you can be sure that htmx will be sufficient to handle all the functionality
I'm however more curious about going the other way, i.e. you start a project with Htmx which happily grows but after a while, a large feature is requested which inevitably changes the direction of the app into React use-case territory. I can't think of concrete example but you now have to work around it with htmx or commit to rewriting to React (or alternative). Wonder what are thoughts of people who had to deal with this
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadIf your solution is actually good, it will get adopted eventually...
Forget React, there's still stuff written in jQuery and JSP.
Why the rush to convert everything - you're not a missionary on a mission, just build your stuff in stuff you like?
The attack on npm is ridiculous, when (apart from introducing a permanent vulnerability in the form of a runtime dependency on a third party site), you still need npm for htmx.
I used to believe this when I first started in tech. The truth is even something as seemingly innocent as javascript runtimes now have an incredible amount of money behind them. And sometimes even marketing budgets. Deno released a high-production trailer for their 2.0 release last year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swXWUfufu2w
I've also seen some really cool and well-thought out technologies simply not gain any traction.
The truth is you ultimately do need some big company behind you or major personality writing blog posts to ultimately make it.
Techies don't like to admit it but we're just as reliant on influencers as anyone else.
And now I'm at the breaking point. So I'm planning to move to tailwind and Go templates, but honestly, i was hopeful for htmx, so I need to properly see the usecase. Which i don't know is this. It reminds me of Angular a lot...
htmx is a great idea, but it's not necessary anymore. We're very close to invokers being baseline (and even that is just an extension of the "composedPath includes -> invoke" pattern), and that will take care of plenty of what htmx was designed to do. Between features like that, and web components, I'm very happy to stick with "plain HTML" (no frameworks; my web components do not draw from a core module or anything).
Also, just a suggestion because it's not technically wrong:
The example of sometimes needing an auto-completing search box is probably not the best one to use. I'm sure it's meant to say "you want the results to be queried from a server/database on every input", which you would certainly need javascript for. But the specific example of just having a search box autocomplete can actually be fulfilled with a datalist element. It won't dynamically re-query results, but it will filter based on input. So it's a muddy example, at best, and that's probably not great for the point trying to be made.
Any big reason to use HTMX instead? Is Turbo not really discussed much because of it's association to RoR?
In my experience, a lot of SPAs transfer more data than the front-end actually needs. One team I worked on was sending 4MB over the wire to render 14kb of actual HTML. (No, there wasn't some processing happening on the front-end that needed the extra data.) And that was using graphql, some dev just plunked all the fields in the graphql query instead of the ones actually needed. I've seen that pattern a lot, although in some cases it's been to my benefit, like finding more details on a tracking website than the UI presented.
https://justfuckingusereact.com
https://justfuckingusetailwind.com
https://www.justfuckinguserails.com
Of course it will work. I can vibe code the most terrible web framework you have seen within 20 minutes and claim it is better than React, but what does it prove?
> You write zero JavaScript > The whole library is ~14kb gzipped
Oh sure, if there is nothing else in your UI, and if your Python/Go/whatever backend server has 0 dependency, which almost never happens.
The article doesn't define any target audience in specific, so there you go.
Why not "just use HTML"?
This means that in theory you (as a dev) don't need (to write any) js, nor do your users need to download a full page (for any interaction) like it's 1999. Your webserver replies with fully server-renderd HTML but just for the dom node (say a div) that you want to replace.
It's fun for very simple things, even great for extremely simple interactions modes. For interactive products, anything beyond simple CRUDs, it's madness.
Whenever you want to sprinkle a tiny bit of interactivity you'll have to choose between the path of least resistance (a small hack on HTMX) or a proper way. State management gets out of control real fast, it's the opposite of UI=f(state).
I've seen it go bad, then worse with alpine-js, and then completely ripped in favor of something where people can let the browser do browser things.
[edit for clarity]
https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/
Also, please try unpoly:
https://unpoly.com/
It’s another excellent hypermedia oriented library
Edit: the article is actually not nearly as unreasonable as I thought based on the just-f*king-use template. Still prefer a chill vibe for htmx though.
First - simple use cases sure great. But imagine you have to update some element out of the from tree. Now you need to have OOB swaps and your HTML must contain that fragment.
Not just that your server template code now has to determine if it is HTMX request and only render OOB fragments if so.
Even at decent size app, soon it turns super brittle.
Yet to talk about complicated interfaces. Let's not go complicated just think of variants in an E-commerce admin panel.
3 variants with 5 values each these are 125 SKU rows that must be collapsed group wise.
htmx can do it but it's going to be very very difficult and brittle.
So it is surely very useful but it is NOT the only tool for all use cases.
This is super simple to do if you are using a library to generate HTML in your backend programming language.
> Not just that your server template code now has to determine if it is HTMX request and only render OOB fragments if so.
This is literally just a function that checks for a couple of headers, chooses between two rendering options, and adds a `Vary` response header to take care of the caching. Hardly anything complicated.
> htmx can do it but it's going to be very very difficult and brittle.
The problem with this summary is that it misses the point–htmx is not doing backend stuff, your backend app server is. Htmx is just swapping in what the backend sends.
> it is NOT the only tool for all use cases.
The OP said exactly this, the htmx people have always said this, and no one ever claimed otherwise. There are people out there who don't think in absolute all-or-nothing terms.
With all the examples people keep using, I assumed it would be way smaller. 16kb minified is a lot.
Looking at the docs just now the core api seems reasonable, but it a lot larger than I'd assumed.
I'd bet that almost any site which isn't intentionally bare bones will have a lot more than 16KB of JS.
I'm however more curious about going the other way, i.e. you start a project with Htmx which happily grows but after a while, a large feature is requested which inevitably changes the direction of the app into React use-case territory. I can't think of concrete example but you now have to work around it with htmx or commit to rewriting to React (or alternative). Wonder what are thoughts of people who had to deal with this
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guid...