Please Just Try Htmx

Please Just Fucking Try HTMX

A measured-yet-opinionated plea from someone who's tired of watching you suffer

Look. I'm not going to call you a fucking moron every other sentence. That's been done. It's a whole genre now. And honestly? HTMX doesn't need me to scream at you to make its point.

The sweary web manifesto thing is fun—I've enjoyed reading them—but let's be real: yelling "JUST USE HTML" or "JUST FUCKING USE REACT" hasn't actually changed anyone's stack. People nod, chuckle, and then go right back to fighting their raw JS or their webpack config.1

So I'm going to try something different. I'll still swear (I'm not a fucking saint), but I'm also going to show you something, in the course of imploring you, for your own sanity and happiness, to at least please just try htmx.

The False Choice

Right now, the shouters are offering you two options:

Option A: "Just use HTML!" And they're not wrong. HTML is shockingly capable. Forms work. Links work. The

element exists now. The web was built on this stuff and it's been chugging along since Tim Berners-Lee had hair. And a little tasteful CSS can go a long motherfucking way.

But sometimes—and here's where it gets uncomfortable—you actually do need a button that updates part of a page without reloading the whole damn thing. You do need a search box that shows results as you type. You do need interactivity.

So you turn to:

... continue reading