HTMX's whole vibe is amazing. It's good tech, kept simple, useful in gobs of situations, but doesn't take itself too seriously. I've used it in professional and side projects since intercooler.js, and still love it. Here's a crazy unicorn-laser-eyes mug[0] that evokes the vibes of NROL-39[1]. I adore it.
The nrol 39 mission patch is one of my favorites. You should find the authorizing docs for that patch and read the hand written notes. They're hilarious.
hello all, we are releasing htmx 4.0 on the Game Boy and Gameboy Color (thank you rcy for submitting)
it is a real, honest-to-goodness mario-bros inspired GameBoy game with four levels over three biomes ending in a slop factory where you battle final boss warren buffering (an online character I beef with, we are friends)
if you beat him it unlocks the source code for htmx 4.0
game was written by Stephen Mitchell (aka scum) by hand, using GBStudio w/heavy customizations, hoping to get an essay by him up soon talking about the creation of the game
I've been using htmx for three years now, and it's completely unlocked new ways of building software for the web, especially if you use a server-side templating language.
But more importantly (as this "Game Boy" option reveals), the head honcho is really responsive with the items in the store. I had purchased a coffee mug a few years back and complained on Twitter that they need to sell larger mugs instead of only offering little tiny baby mugs that only hold ~8 ounces of liquid. The next day, he added giant 48-ounce monsters to the store and I've been drinking out of that mug every day since.
> I've been using htmx for three years now, and it's completely unlocked new ways of building software for the web, especially if you use a server-side templating language.
Likewise. 3 or 4 years ago, I ripped out two-thirds of all the JS in my B2B SaaS by using htmx with server-side templating. So much simpler.
The ethos of allowing a return to a simpler way of building a web app resonates with me.
Likewise, I started using HTMX with AWS Step Functions as the backend and it’s been difficult but also a joy. Sfn these days makes for a weird and wild text templating engine. I’ve been thinking about working on DSL overlay to smooth the bumps a bit.
It's been massive for me as well. I would say my web developmemt is best described as dabbling in web development, and I mostly do so for websites that cater to academic interests and conference / society managment and organising. So, relativly niche.
However, I think HTMX is a beauty. Fast, simple, and doesnt come with all the bloat and BS a JS heavy / JS first deployment comes with. I can quikckly build fast and responsive sites that cost visitors very little to use/interact with.
websites have less compatability issues now, load extremely fast (google web speed score from 60-80 to flat 100), and have fewer points of failure. Debugging is a breeze. Websites are no less pretty or useful for it. In fact, they look better now because time otherwise wasted on Js BS is now free to use to tinker with / improve aesthetic, or add new features.
I'm in love with HTMX. It feels like what the web should have always been. There's absolutly zero reason a random website, without my knowledge or consent, should be running extremely heavy compute and analytics on my own device. That should never have been possible/permissible in the first place.
> it's completely unlocked new ways of building software for the web, especially if you use a server-side templating language.
Could you please expand on this point. As a “greybeard” web dev from the 2000’s era, I’d like to understand if your “unlocking” is my “that’s how it originally worked, get of my lawn”?
HTMX is awesome. I've replaced several OSS web apps on my home server with HTMX + Go + PostgreSQL replacements. The results are lightweight, responsive, work great on desktop and mobile alike, all with the absolute minimum complexity required. The codebases are easy to understand and modify, and so far I'm going months between updates (mostly just minor bugfixes for my applications). I fully expec my mature apps will go years if not decades between required upgrades.
Thank you to the HTMX-folks for keeping software fun! I've been a happy HTMX user and Grug essay forwarder since it first made the rounds here on HN. This was an instant purchase :)
While I am not particularly a fan of HTMX, I do absolutely adore how Carson and the team always have such a great sense of humor with the project.
I used HTMX in a few projects, and the library worked well enough for what I needed, but I found it to be a bit too limiting compared to accomplishing the same task in Vanilla JS (my go-to).
I didn’t do the art, but I did do the graphic design/layout of the box. I can assure you there was no AI used on the box. (Well, except for the CRT effect on the screenshots. ChatGPT helped out there.) I did the work in PhotoPea using the artist’s original work as a base.
I’m amazed at how cheap this is. How is this possible for what I’m assuming is a relatively low-volume physical product? I don’t suppose it’s produced on-demand, but also Carson Gross probably doesn’t have 1000 of these boxes at his home, or I would have seen the pics on twitter.
I made the switch to HTMX recently After 12+ years of building web apps with Javascript and its been nice. I always hated the build complexity of modern Javascript, so much tooling, dependencies and packages to get basic functionality.
I love HTMX and use it in a few projects, but its amusing how whats old is new again. .NET Framework / Web Forms had update panels to do partial rendering of web pages back in 2005. Outside of .NET developers it got a lot of hate. But to a certain extent HTMX is a super well refined and more capable version of update panels and more.
I was at Big Sky Dev Con when they unveiled the GameBoy game. I kid you not my jaw dropped. I thought it was some sort of like emulator gimmick until they said "everyone can take a physical cartridge home!"
One of the most delightful little swag stunts I've ever seen, and emblematic of the HTMX crew just how much they care about craft and delight in everything they do.
Love to see new stuff on ancient platforms. Surprised I couldn't find a post about Micro Mages on HN, only comments. https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM
Spoiler, when the time will come you'll never see something like this on the play station 4.
What I don't like about Htmx is, that it is still a JS framework, without good automatic fallbacks for a noscript situation. This leads to web devs thinking it would be great to do all the things in Htmx, even if all they have is a static page with static content.
Just recently I looked at hosting an old school forum. I don't want to load all the PHP and MySQL baggage on my server or even run it in docker, so I looked for Python solutions. Found PunkwebBB. Was happy for a short time with it, until I tested it more in depth with no scripts. Unfortunately, while it has some good fallbacks in some places, it doesn't have them everywhere and some buttons just don't do anything without JS. It also uses Htmx. Completely unnecessary JS, considering the function of the buttons.
I considered forking it. But the amount of work to remove the needless JS, and repair it ...
So now I am building my own forum completely without JS, and with Python Django doing a lot of heavy lifting.
PunkwebBB maintainer here. This is good feedback. The only thing that really does need HTMX/JS on PunkwebBB is the shoutbox polling, which you can opt out of anyway. But you're right that there should be non JS fallbacks in place of modals and other small htmx interactions. I'll get on this.
I haven't published a release yet, I removed HTMX from thread/post actions and deleting categories/subcategories. The shoutbox is now the only functionality that won't work when JS is disabled. I've improved the fallback of the thread/post editor when JS is disabled as well. Those changes are in the main branch now.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 27.1 ms ] thread[0]: https://swag.htmx.org/collections/octohorse
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-247
it is a real, honest-to-goodness mario-bros inspired GameBoy game with four levels over three biomes ending in a slop factory where you battle final boss warren buffering (an online character I beef with, we are friends)
if you beat him it unlocks the source code for htmx 4.0
game was written by Stephen Mitchell (aka scum) by hand, using GBStudio w/heavy customizations, hoping to get an essay by him up soon talking about the creation of the game
carts were produced w/the expertise of Jarason Banes who also did the cover design. Cover art is by Ash (https://www.fiverr.com/ae1996/) who also did the soft-cover art for https://hypermedia.systems
Hope you find it enjoyable if you get a copy and at least find it funny if you don't :)
But more importantly (as this "Game Boy" option reveals), the head honcho is really responsive with the items in the store. I had purchased a coffee mug a few years back and complained on Twitter that they need to sell larger mugs instead of only offering little tiny baby mugs that only hold ~8 ounces of liquid. The next day, he added giant 48-ounce monsters to the store and I've been drinking out of that mug every day since.
Likewise. 3 or 4 years ago, I ripped out two-thirds of all the JS in my B2B SaaS by using htmx with server-side templating. So much simpler.
The ethos of allowing a return to a simpler way of building a web app resonates with me.
However, I think HTMX is a beauty. Fast, simple, and doesnt come with all the bloat and BS a JS heavy / JS first deployment comes with. I can quikckly build fast and responsive sites that cost visitors very little to use/interact with.
websites have less compatability issues now, load extremely fast (google web speed score from 60-80 to flat 100), and have fewer points of failure. Debugging is a breeze. Websites are no less pretty or useful for it. In fact, they look better now because time otherwise wasted on Js BS is now free to use to tinker with / improve aesthetic, or add new features.
I'm in love with HTMX. It feels like what the web should have always been. There's absolutly zero reason a random website, without my knowledge or consent, should be running extremely heavy compute and analytics on my own device. That should never have been possible/permissible in the first place.
Could you please expand on this point. As a “greybeard” web dev from the 2000’s era, I’d like to understand if your “unlocking” is my “that’s how it originally worked, get of my lawn”?
This was my trick for cutting back to two cups of coffee a day.
I have right now a landing page and a NiceGUI dashboard with websockets (but only need SSE, though I need charts).
I am all the time looking at htmx and used to "desktop-like" workflows for UI authoring.
So I went with NiceGUI. But I wonder if or what tasks I could sinolify. My sites are low/middle-traffic.
I do not need any API backend at all, just final user presentation.
Your client does not have permission to get URL /en-cad/products/htmx-4-the-game from this server.
TIL. Thanks! Now all the Grug references in the shop make sense, as well as the wisdom and overall vibe of the htmx project :)
[0] https://www.infoworld.com/article/2336201/complexity-bad-an-...
[1] https://grugbrain.dev/
I used HTMX in a few projects, and the library worked well enough for what I needed, but I found it to be a bit too limiting compared to accomplishing the same task in Vanilla JS (my go-to).
https://hypermedia.systems
...I may have done this.
well done to the htmx team.
One of the most delightful little swag stunts I've ever seen, and emblematic of the HTMX crew just how much they care about craft and delight in everything they do.
Just recently I looked at hosting an old school forum. I don't want to load all the PHP and MySQL baggage on my server or even run it in docker, so I looked for Python solutions. Found PunkwebBB. Was happy for a short time with it, until I tested it more in depth with no scripts. Unfortunately, while it has some good fallbacks in some places, it doesn't have them everywhere and some buttons just don't do anything without JS. It also uses Htmx. Completely unnecessary JS, considering the function of the buttons.
I considered forking it. But the amount of work to remove the needless JS, and repair it ...
So now I am building my own forum completely without JS, and with Python Django doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Release will come soon, still some things baking.
Even React-aholics have to tip their hats to a Game Boy release.