The one where I reject JavaScript UI libraries

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A developer explores HTMX as a replacement for SvelteKit in a self-hosted podcast web app, appreciates its server-rendered HTML philosophy, then immediately removes it to build a minimal custom version using the same ideas. The post covers practical HTMX observations including HTTP caching headers, accessibility nitpicks with div-click examples, and non-standard hx-* attributes. The author concludes that the philosophy behind HTMX — reducing front-end JavaScript in favor of server templates — is more valuable than the library itself, and demonstrates how little browser-side JS is actually needed.

HTMX Is So Cool I Rolled My Own!

Using HTMX, learning it, then removing and trying your own is a good way to learn things. HTMX does give a little more, though (for instance, a mature, tested codebase with most edge cases out of the way).
It’s always kind of funny for me when reading about SSR like it’s some revelation of the modern UI age. Do web development long enough and nothing surprises you.
SSR is just a modern term for how we did web development in the 90s - everything was rendered on the server. The browser received ready HTML. And yes, we had components - just not the way you imagine them. They were just HTML fragments in a template engine of a web framework that were included where needed - so still encapsulated, reusable, etc., etc., just on the server-side. The browser was called a “thin client” for a reason.
That all changed with the advent of XHR (or as we called it back then: AJAX - “Asynchronous JavaScript And XML”), bigger JS libraries and frameworks (jQuery, AngularJS). I’m not saying one is better than the other or hating any option - both have their pros and cons. I just find it amusing that the UI experiment took around 20 years to start returning back to the server-side (as in “history likes to repeat itself” kind of amused 😉).
Or maybe it’s a middle-ground? With HTMX we are clearly throwing HTML rendering back at the server (with components still being HTML fragments handled by a templating engine), while still maintaining most of the dynamic behaviour of a modern web UI. For more dynamic interactions we have web components to fill the gap. Some concepts just don’t want to die, I guess.
Anyway, it’s just one of those “you have to be this old to take this ride” comments. 😁
Also:
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All opinions are my own and not those of a large language model. Everything I write is one hundred percent human. Because I care!
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Respect! 🙂

Can recommend taking a look at Fixi as well (same developer as HTMX) – <a href="https://github.com/bigskysoftware/fixi" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://github.com/bigskysoftware/fixi</a>
Very small and very focused but you can make it your own with plugins. Has its own channel in the HTMX Discord.