Beyond DOM
Date : 2008 01 08 Category : Tech & Development
AjaxianNeil Mix is scheming and waiting for someone to go beyond DOM:
Here’s the problem as I see it: the UI I’ve coded, what you see on the screen, is a reflection (some would call it a transformation) of the data sitting in memory in my JavaScript objects. So why is it that every time the data changes I have to go twiddle something in the DOM? Shouldn’t that just happen automagically?
Why should I have to wrap my head around two UI representations, the markup and the DOM? Markup is easy to read but captures a small sliver of the UI gestalt. The DOM captures everything else, but sits in memory. Can’t it all just be markup, so that I don’t have to spend so much time visualizing data structures whose only representation is either in code or in Firebug?
Neil is looking to cycle back and see how we can put pieces together to get to a better place. I think that 2008 is the year for this. We are seeing many rich Ajax applications which need more than simple XHR requests, and feel the pain that ensues. There is room for solutions that nicely tie the client and the server in a smart way.