[Osiris]

You are missing something.

My team uses Handlebars templates with Ember.js. We build templates with placeholders for bound values or other view templates. When rendered on the client side, a change to a data model causes an automatic change in any templates that are bound to that data. In jQuery there's a potential for forgetting to write code to update a value or part of the page. With this templating system, it's all bound and auto-updated.

Another reason that we use templates is that we put all the template files up on a CDN. The only thing our server serves up is an empty DOM (just a body and a div), and the templates are all built into the DOM on the client side.

Lastly, managing a bunch of small tmpl files with the HTML we want is a lot easier than trying to embed HTML into JavaScript strings to use with jQuery. We just write up some HTML and an Ember view that renders that template in the right place on the page. Organizationally it's very simple and easy to maintain.

[jacobr]

Direct DOM manipulation does not mean that you render things server side and then manipulate them. It also does not mean that you embed HTML in JavaScript strings. The difference is whether you use the DOM APIs (with or without jQuery) to create and update elements, or template libraries and innerHTML.