That approach may fit the need of a modularity but it doesn't solve the remaining issues. To me, the most important issue is to make both backend and frontend dependencies same.

I haven't documented yet but there is something I'm working on for a while, OneJS. It generates a single, stand-alone JavaScript file, not requiring coder to make any change on a CommonJS code. The built file it generates can be run at any platform that doesn't support CommonJS, such as web browsers. It means that we can use the great dependency mechanism NPM provides in our frontend apps.

For those who wonders, OneJS; https://github.com/azer/onejs

Example project; https://github.com/azer/onejs/tree/master/test/example-proje...

Output of the above example project; https://gist.github.com/1286969

A relatively larger example; https://github.com/azer/multiplayerchess.com/tree/master/fro...