What if we'd had better HTML-in-JS syntax all along?

Post by coding123 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

thayne wrote: post #126

coding123 wrote: post #70

I think my favorite thing about JSX specifically - is that the {} breakouts used in it, get all the same treatment from the JS/TS compiler as your Javascript/Typescript does. And all without changing HTML into a JSON or Yaml representation. It just works in VSCode. The number of years of HTML being an relative of the SGML/XML family (pedants calm here, you know what I mean) shouldn't be thrown away just because it's…

What I would love to see is something like jsx supported directly by the browser. Although, I'm not sure what that would do in non-browser EcmaScript environments. Perhaps something like lit-html's html string tag is more likely to be standardized.

Post by Tade0 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

wtetzner wrote: post #162

Tade0 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comment nodes, multiple text nodes in one element node, CDATA section.

Are there any examples of where you'd need that in a web application that's just being used to update the DOM? None of those seem to be necessary to create a modern web application. I'm not arguing, just trying to understand.

Post by mlwiese » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

neilv wrote: post #65

An early alternative would've been to use an integrated language for both HTML and JS features, like Curl, published in 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl_(programming_language) https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1504/IJWET.2003.003259 https://groups.csail.mit.edu/cag/curl/wwwpaper.html (Disclosure: I worked at the Curl commercial spinoff.) Or, many Lisp people just used s-expression data for HTML, and Lisp for everythi…

Post by matwood » Wed, May 13, 2020, 12:29 PM UTC

BerislavLopac wrote: post #153

matwood wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may be interesting to recall that initially the only way to output HTML was by `document.write()` using strings (which was pretty declarative). I think people also forget how slow a lot of JS was really until V8. I remember having server code generate JS arrays (creating them from an xhr request was too slow), that in turn would document.write (manipulating the DOM was also super slow) data on the client to make…

> creating them from an xhr request was too slow You had XHR? Luxury! We had to embed a 1x1 px Java applet to communicate with the server without reloading the page! ;)

Post by spankalee » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

coding123 wrote: post #161

thayne wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I would love to see is something like jsx supported directly by the browser. Although, I'm not sure what that would do in non-browser EcmaScript environments. Perhaps something like lit-html's html string tag is more likely to be standardized.

I was going to bring up Polymer's lit-element / html`` syntax but decided it was a dead horse - but in any case, hopefully that isn't the way things go. Even though the breakouts ${} are JS and the compiler can help with those, it doesn't do much for repetition. I really think that's one area that angularjs -> angular X really struggled was templates that repeat things... React pulled that off so f...ing fabulously.…

    html`
      
      ${items.map((i) => html`${i}`)}
      
    `