[crftr]

HTMX aims to render itself obsolete by serving as a proof of concept to advance the HTML specification. In various interviews and blog posts, Carson has mentioned that jQuery was essential only until browsers implemented features like `querySelectorAll`.

The discussion about Library vs. Framework misses the core objective of the HTMX project.

[dvogel]

When I initially read the htmx documentation I was confused because it kept talking about a hypermedia client. The context clues suggested they were referring to htmx but my brain kept saying "isn't the browser the hypermedia client?" Eventually it sank in that htmx is an extension of the hypermedia client. When I first tried to use htmx I experienced a lot of discomfort regarding areas where htmx feels non-standard, such as redirects in the hx- readers on a 200 response. Once I understood that htmx is explicitly trying to move the boundary of the hypermedia client a lot of that discomfort melted away.

[lurking15]

Yes htmx is an augmentation of the browser, specifically through enhancing HTML by way of JS. The idea is that JS frameworks became popular due to the lack of additional hypermedia controls which are the basis for how agents (users) interact with websites through hypermedia clients (browsers).

[troupo]

> Once I understood that htmx is explicitly trying to move the boundary of the hypermedia client a lot of that discomfort melted away.

What do you mean by "moving the boundary of hypermedia client"?

HTMX tries to claim that hypermedia to only applies to HTMX because something something browsers and html.

Simply put, anything that talks HTTP and understands responses from a server is a hypermedia client to an extent.

You can create a client that only accepts base32-encoded cat gifs, and that will be a hypermedia client (in its infancy).

[wild_egg]

> Simply put, anything that talks HTTP and understands responses from a server is a hypermedia client to an extent.

No, anything that understands hypermedia responses is a hypermedia client.

Cat GIFs are not hypermedia so a cat GIF viewer is not a hypermedia client

Maybe I'm overly grumpy this morning but words do actually have meanings that we can look up and refer to

[paulddraper]

> words do actually have meanings that we can look up and refer to

It's odd to insist on strict word choice when transferring GIF images using the hypertext transfer protocol.

[masklinn]

It's not though? Gifs are media, but they are not hypermedia because they don't support hypertext (can't link to to other media).

As such, they're ancillary sub-resources to hypermedia but not themselves hypermedia.

[flir]

If you're going to get that picky (and please be aware I'm only doing this for the sake of the argument) media can never be hypermedia in the absence of the client. HTML opened in notepad is just text. Cat GIFs, rendered in the correct client, would absolutely be hypermedia (you could inline link data as QR codes, if you felt like being perverse).

Hypermedia starts with the client, not with the file format.

[troupo]

Yeah. PDFs would be a better example. They can link to other media :)

But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a crazy project somewhere using GIFs as a way to render HTML pages with clickable links :D

[troupo]

Yeah, I went overboard with the example. The issue is that HTMX tries to take over the concept of hypermedia as if it means only HTMX and whatever HTMX is doing :)

[AmpsterMan]

Htmx posits that current browsers aren't "truly" hypermedia since only anchor tags and forms can initiate GET/POST requests. It is more of a tech demo showing what client with ANY tag being able to do requests would look like.

That's why whether it is library/framework is besides the point. The author posits that these features should be in the spec, and tries as closely as possible to show what something might look like if we had it in the spec

[troupo]

> The author posits that these features should be in the spec

Does he? The author pretends that his library is what hypertext and hypermedia are as envisioned by Time Berners-Lee and Roy Fielding, and that his approach is the only true representation of both. And that's about it. Nothing about "this should be in the spec"

[joedevon]

You are missing the spirit of the whole thing. HTMX is a polyfill for the future state of browsers.

[troupo]

It's not, and it's not even pretending to be

[dventimi]

> The author pretends that his library is what hypertext and hypermedia are as envisioned by Time Berners-Lee and Roy Fielding, and that his approach is the only true representation of both.

Does he? Evidence or it didn't happen.

[troupo]

They literally have an entire book written to contort those definitions to mean HTMX

[recursivedoubts]

you keep saying this despite the fact that I explicitly include https://hyperview.org as an example of another hypermedia in https://hypermedia.systems. I am very open to other types of hypermedia and often refer people to “RESTful Web Cliebts” by mark amundsen (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/restful-web-clients/978...) to learn how build them.

[troupo]

> I am very open to other types of hypermedia

Of course you're not. And I already pointed it out to you elsewhere. Your entire writing and marketing revolves around one idea, and one idea only: HTML is "natural hypermedia", and everything else is not.

[recursivedoubts]

OK, this is just completely unreasonable of you. HTML is a natural hypermedia in that it has native hypermedia controls. JSON & XML are not natural hypermedia because they do not, however hypermedia controls can be added on top of them, as in the case of HXML/hyperview, which, again I include in my book on hypermedia systems.

There are many other hypermedias, such as Siren, which uses JSON as a base, and I have never claimed otherwise. Mark Amundsen, perhaps the worlds expert on hypermedia, wrote the forward to my book, Hypermedia Systems, and found nothing objectionable and much worthwhile in it.

I hate to be rude but you didn't understand, or refused to acknowledge, the basic meaning and usage of the term 'hypermedia control' until I cited a W3C document using it. While I certainly understand people can dislike the conceptual basis of htmx, its admittedly idiosyncratic implementation or the way we talk about it, at this point I have tried to engage you multiple times in good faith here and have been rewarded with baseless accusations of things I haven't said and don't believe.

At this point, to be an honest person, you need to apologize for misrepresenting what I am saying multiple times to other people. It is dishonest and it makes you a liar, over something as dumb as a technical disagreement.

[troupo]

> I hate to be rude but you didn't understand, or refused to acknowledge, the basic meaning and usage of the term 'hypermedia control' until I cited a W3C document using it.

Just because you were correct in one small detail (citing a 2019 standard retrofitting definitions for the use in RDF etc.) doesn't make you correct in the grand scheme of things.

> with baseless accusations of things I haven't said and don't believe.

I literally quoted your own words at you.

> you need to apologize for misrepresenting what I am saying multiple times to other people.

I will not apologize for things that I even quoted from your own writing and words.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

At this point you are very loudly and publicly grinding your axe to the point that you’re telling someone to their face that they don’t understand their own viewpoint. Putting aside briefly the insanity and futility of that, it makes for a bad experience for literally everyone else.

[karmarepellent]

Are you sure HTMX aims to be eventually incorporated in some form or another into the HTML spec? I think I read most of the blog articles on the website but I cannot remember such a statement.

Another question in the same vein: In your view, why is it so important for the project to advance the HTML spec?

By the way I am actually curious about this, I am an avid user of HTMX, but have never contemplated this.

Edit: Ok I think I get it now. HTMX provides hypermedia controls that should have been in the standard from the beginning. It also more-or-less maintains the current semantics of the web as defined in the HTML spec. Therefore it is logical to eventually include it into the standard. That it?

[radlad]

Maybe not an explicit aim, but it sounds like Carson Gross holds a positive view of browsers implementing these features directly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35831981

[recursivedoubts]

yeah, i don't think the htmx API would be the right thing to add to HTML, it's too specific to htmx, but the idea of generalizing hypermedia controls is something i hope the browser people look at

[troupo]

They have, and it failed. "Hypermedia controls" are for machines, first and foremost. That's what RDF and semantic web were supposed to be about, but that never took off in any significant shape or form.

[dragonelite]

Yeah that was the same impression i had of HTMX it makes sense to integrate HTMX functionality into HTML 6 or whatever.

[paulddraper]

It's not so much that HTMX itself would be included, as much as its philosophy of improved HTML.

[dartos]

I hope it works! HTML is in dire need of some tlc

[Cthulhu_]

I was ultimately disappointed in HTML5 even though it was supposed to bring HTML into this era, with things like audio/video tags and new input methods for phone numbers and the like for mobile users. But ultimately it fell flat, was incomplete, and it feels like it's been stagnant again since HTML5 came out.

[tangue]

Yep in 2024 we still haven’t found a generic datepicker and hundreds of people on the internet are coding their own version. HTML5 snafu

[runarberg]

What is wrong with <input type="date">?

[Koffiepoeder]

Timezone support, no date ranges (eg from-to), date formats are a mess (mdn: "At the moment, the best way to deal with dates in forms in a cross-browser way is to have the user enter the day, month, and year in separate controls, or to use a JavaScript library such as jQuery date picker."), often rules are needed (eg only weekdays), non gregorian calendars, ...

A good date input would cover at least like 80-90% of use cases in my opinion. From experience it's currently more something like ~40% or so.

[bityard]

HTML5 was definitely a mixed bag. On the on hand, it gave us cleaner markup.

On the other hand, now we have auto-playing videos on every other page.

[nine_k]

But how about Web Components? Finally, it seems, there's something reusable, and something reasonably framework-neutral.

[troupo]

You will need to wait another 10-15 years before they overcome the issues that they caused for themselves (while twisting and contorting the platform in unpredictable ways): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1717580502280867847

[bobthepanda]

is it that nice?

the beauty of HTML markup is that it's declarative. at least from the tutorials I've seen, WebComponents drag you firmly back into imperative land with document.addChild everywhere.

[nine_k]

The imperative part is required to build a Web Component.

When you merely import it. you can use it as declaratively as any other HTML tag. Basically Web COmponents allow you to add your own tags that are rendered as components, and freely mix "built-in" and "custom" DOM nodes in your document.

[sharlos201068]

I'm pretty sure a declarative shadow Dom is currently in the works.

[paulddraper]

Web Components are how you can create user-land HTML elements.

But there is a widespread desire for better native HTML elements.

E.g., a date range input.

[nine_k]

I'd say that it's the other way around, and native elements that are not system-dependent (say, a video player) should lose prominence. There's no reason to have a "native-looking" button on a web page, which otherwise cannot (and should not) be made native-looking.

Instead I expect the industry to stabilize around a few widespread sets of web components, much like a lot of CSS for controls stabilized around Bootstrap's styles.

[troupo]

Which controls stabilized around Bootstrap styles (now there's a a name I haven't heard in a long time)?

No, industry should not and will not stabilize around "few widespread sets". For the simple reason: it's extremely difficult to create a proper userland UI control in the browser. How many custom drop downs fail even the most basic keyboard behaviours? How many custom UI elements fail even the most basic screenreader interactions? etc. etc.

What you really truly need is a rich browser-native set if controls, and https://open-ui.org/ is slowly working towards that.

Related: You can't capture the nuance of my form fields https://web.archive.org/web/20230208235009/https://drewdevau...

[dfabulich]

I'd love to see something like HTMX get standardized, but I'm extremely pessimistic for HTMX's prospects for standardization in HTML.

In talking to a few standards folks about it, they've all said, "oh, yeah, you want declarative AJAX; people have tried and failed to get that standardized for years." Even just trying to get <form> to target a section of the page that isn't an <iframe> has been argued about and hashed out for years.

Why is that? Well, for example, here's the form you have to fill out to start standardizing a front-end feature. https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/new?assignees=&labels=...

It asks three main questions:

* What problem are you trying to solve?

* What solutions exist today?

* How would you solve it?

The goal of these questions is to focus primarily on the problem, and only secondarily on the solution.

For comparison, generally standards folks think we don't want to add programming-language features to HTML, e.g. adding <if> <while> and <set-variable> elements. If you want that sort of thing, you want a full programming language; you want JavaScript, actually.

So, when people propose features that don't perfectly address their problem, we want to ask: what do you want that for? How could we solve those problems better?

HTMX doesn't have really great answers to the "what problem?" question. Look at the home page:

* Why should only <a> and <form> be able to make HTTP requests?

* Why should only click & submit events trigger them?

* Why should only GET & POST methods be available?

* Why should you only be able to replace the entire screen?

Those questions are all solution-oriented, not problem-oriented.

Instead, let's look at the examples. https://htmx.org/examples/

Each of those examples are important problems that HTMX can solve. But it doesn't solve them very well from the perspective of screen-reader accessibility.

For example, there's a bunch of stuff there around managing editable data tables (click to edit, bulk update, click to load rows, delete row, edit row). But none of them work well with screen readers. How would a screen reader describe updates to these data tables? (Go on and try those examples in a screen reader, e.g. iOS VoiceOver. It's not great.)

Of course, editable data tables are a very widely requested HTML feature; it seems quite likely that a feature like that will be added to HTML. When it is, a screen reader will announce the feature as a data table, describing it to the user clearly, including live updates.

Some of the HTMX examples already have recent new HTML features that support them directly, like <dialog>, declarative form validation, using <details> as an accordion (which you can use to support tabs).

In the future, I expect to see HTML features landing like these:

* Editable data tables

* Infinite scroll / lazy loading

* Combobox

* Skeleton UI / Loading

If/when those features get done, it's not totally clear which problems remain that would be a good fit for HTMX's approach to declarative AJAX. Like adding <if> <while> or <set-variable> elements, the problems it solves seem to all have better solutions at a different level.

And yet, we'll probably be waiting 5-10 years for those features to be standardized, at a minimum. So it's a bummer that HTMX probably won't be standardized any time soon, and that the standards committee has consistently let the "best" solution become the enemy of a "good enough" solution.

But, that's what happened, and I expect it to continue to happen, so I wouldn't hold your breath for HTMX standardization. (If you'd been holding your breath ten years ago, you'd be long dead now.)

[masklinn]

> I'd love to see something like HTMX get standardized, but I'm extremely pessimistic for HTMX's prospects for standardization in HTML.

I don't think the point is for HTMX to get standardised, but rather for HTMX to drive conversation and evolutions in the spec.

After all jQuery did not get standardised. Rather the issues solved by subsets of jquery were looked at, and considered for solving in the standard.

[leptons]

HTMX breaks the "separation of concerns" paradigm. It's not going to help anyone doing anything complex, and it's going to be a crutch for anyone getting started. It breaks down quickly when the problem is anything more complex than clicking a button to load some content, and then what - rewrite everything in a more capable framework?

[cubefox]

That's like preventing HTML5 to include a native date picker. Because if you want anything more complex than a basic date picker, then what? Rewrite everything in JavaScript?

Simple answer: yes.

[naasking]

> Those questions are all solution-oriented, not problem-oriented.

I think the problem is at it's core, "how do I add rich interactivity and dynamism to an HTML document without scripting?"

A general event-driven document model where document events can automatically issue server requests whose replies then trigger more document events and/or updates makes sense. htmx is one way to do this, but probably not the only or best way, but it has the core idea right: generalize hypermedia and extend the event model.

[falsandtru]

An example on the top page shows that this is an operation that should be written as a program. Therefore, this is not markup. Syntax that is not markup will not be the HTML specification.

> <button hx-post="/clicked" hx-swap="outerHTML">

[pphysch]

How is that different than a standard <a> or <form> element that submits an HTTP request, receives some HTML in response, and uses that HTML to render a new GUI?

[hellcow]

The point of HTMX is that any element can submit HTTP requests, and you can drop the response anywhere in the document. It no longer has to be just <a> and <form> with full page reloads.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

Yes. That’s the point? So why is it egregious in a way that <form> is not?

[omnimus]

It's not different. The question is if we would have current JS capabilities in the past would we choose adding handling of <form> to HTML or would we say use JS for that. I am not sure what is the right answer but adding features to both sides is probably not a great idea because you just bloat everything.

[pphysch]

It's a language paradigm thing. You can implement anything, from HTML to CSS, in pure imperative JS, but the result would be extremely verbose and virtually impossible for machines to interpret on the fly (i.e. little accessibility support).

There is concrete value in stating unambiguously "this is a <form>" versus "this is a blob of imperative code that I swear acts like a <form>".

[recursivedoubts]

"should" is doing a lot of work in that sentence

how do you feel about the href, method and action attributes in HTML?

[songbird23]

this is super helpful take. i get it now

[guilhas]

Wouldn't it be better to leave HTML as a passive document markup?

And add HTMX as an "extension"

[throwaway_08932]

I hope "render itself" was an intentional rendering pun.

[jjkeddo199]

Agreed