GRgraderjs·Oct 2, 2021
Hello Humans of HN,
This is BANG! a new UI framework for JavaScript on the web. It comes out of work I did in 2014 (on a web component framework with v0 Shadow DOM) and in 2018 (on a pure view-as-a-function of state framework with JavaScript template tag functions, variously known as brutal.js, dumbass and now vanillaview or just VV).
This work unifies those two works, and combines the JavaScript templating and minimal DOM updates (diffs without VDOM, by using granular updating functions down even to the level of splicing text nodes and text in attribute values and names) of VV with the scoped-styles, and component organization of the original unnamed web component framework.
It also adds a few new things, such as fixing some bugs in VV that I didn't even know existed before I tried merging it with another framework, making the list-diffi
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ng capability of VV truly minimal (previously it would reprint the whole list if any item order changed, not only items inserted or deleted actually are), and adding support for something I'm very proud of..."custom self-closing tags."
You can't get self-closing custom tags in HTML, because you can't define them. HTML has a limited set (<input>, <img>, <hr> and the like), but their syntax has always been neat. And React picked up on this as a way to include a component in another. I really liked that syntax. In VV I simply used template slots and function calls to the included view function to include components, it worked. But I always wanted a neater syntax. I experimented with a parser at the time, and that worked, too. But the performance was slow, and I thought it made the code clunky.
You can see it running 7GUIs here: https://i5ik.github.io/_____/7guis/
One day I had the realization I could use HTML comment nodes. They look, "kinda" like elements, and you can write them by omitting everything but the leading `<!` and closing `>`. This was what I needed. Hence "bang" (at least I think that's where the name comes from, I'm not even sure). So these "bang tags" are self-closing tags, that are automatically converted to regular custom elements. Allowing you to type less.
<!this-is-my-custom-tag here=is an=attribute state=myData/>
I build things to improve my developer experience. That's all important. Then you're more efficient, and effective and you enjoy doing it more. So I'm sharing it here because I want to contribute to you, too. Maybe it's something valuable for you, or maybe it gives you ideas. Either way, this framework is yours. It's an open-source permissive license, and yours to contribute to, or fork or whatever.
It's got bugs right now and the syntax is more limited than VV, but I like it better. I wanted something new, and I got it. By making this. I can always add the VV syntax I removed for performance and simplicity during the merge, back later. But I'm not sure if I will, not yet. If you want something more battle-tested take a look at VV[0], but note that some of the fixes I made to the merged-VV have not been included back in main. I'm sure I'm going to do that eventually, but not for a while yet probably. I'm too busy basking in the bliss that is BANG!. This is the only comment I'll make on this thread, but hopefully it's now your bliss too :P ;) xx
[0]: https://github.com/i5ik/vanillaview