AngularJS: If HTML were built for writing web apps

This looks interesting but I am not sure about the use of additional attributes. Will AngularJS produce well-formed markup? Can't help to notice that the example code on the front page uses tables for layout purposes...

I just love the formidable "comeback" that JavaScript has made. It has gone from being hated and patronized to become an incredibly flexible and completely invaluable tool in every web develper's toolkit. With all these frameworks and libraries - jQuery, YUI, node.js - JavaScript is becoming even more powerful and actually fun to code it.

I'm very curious as to what are the philosophy differences and trade-offs between Angular, Knockout, and more lightweight plugins such as jQuery Data-Link [1].

(1) https://github.com/jquery/jquery-datalink

The neatest solution for handling forms I've seen was XForms (http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms11/), originally part of the XHTML2 proposal. You had multiple, potentially schema-validated models per page, the ability to neatly segue in RESTful behaviour and custom controls for dates, ranges, tabs, composite controls etc.

However, the standard relied on robust browser support instead of being added on as a library (here's a current attempt at this: http://code.google.com/p/ubiquity-xforms/). There was also an almost slavish adherence to XPath which was too clunky for certain uses, and finally it ended up as an unfortunate victim of the XHTML2 debacle.

This definitely looks interesting to me. Although I only occasionally write webapps, the web developers who sit near me regularly seem to have to spend a lot of time dealing with problems like jQuery event handler race conditions, JS and server-side state mismatch and so on.

All of it made me wonder if HTML and JS (with jQuery et al) were really the right tools for developing rich user interfaces, or if it was time to look at an alternatives for apps in the browser - although Flash, Adobe Air and Silverlight all seem to be highly unpalatable choices.

(as for me, I'm generally happy with unstyled well-formed XHTML and doing all the work on the server with form submits and page reloads - but that's why I'm not doing webapps for a living!)

Interesting timing - Just today I blogged about HTML5 and how it still doesn't fully address the needs of web apps - http://www.puremango.co.uk/2011/01/what-is-the-point-of-html...

Seems like there are a few projects filling this gap - backbone's been mentioned, there's also sproutcore.

XUL is a great little language but as I say in the blog post: XUL is designed to produce apps with a consistent look-and-feel. HTML is emphatically not (and shouldn't be).

It's tricky to design a web application language which doesn't end up with all apps looking the same.

Older discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118417

I wonder how this differs from backbone.js?

I feel like the web is such a chaotic mess of technologies...we need some sort of universal language in the future. I hope HTML5 will deliver that although I doubt it. I remember reading a blog from Joe Hewitt talking about how he would love to see objective-c for creating web apps (like cappuccino, but tied in with the backend as well). Should be interesting to see what happens

Found I had to disable CSS (there's something wonky hiding their content) but I'm glad to see their documents are still usable if you don't blindly trust everyone's js by default. A lot of sloppy or ignorant authors would have done the js version first and then failed to finish the job.

XUL anyone?