For anyone interested in the idea of having multiple views in JavaScript (with their own URLs!), "Sammy" is a client-side JavaScript framework that's like Ruby's Sinatra: http://code.quirkey.com/sammy/
Indeed, what Ryan mentions sounds a bit like the ideas of Sammy, Backbone, and HTML5 local storage and offline caching blended together into a single tasty package.
If you'd like to browse an example Todos application (with annotated source code) that fuses Backbone.js and HTML5 local storage, here's a good place to start:
Edit: There seem to be a lot of folks who think that Sammy is the only way to get client-side routing -- nothing could be further from the truth. Sammy asks you to structure your entire app around an inappropriate faux-server-side API, and Sammy apps don't work correctly in Internet Explorer because Sammy doesn't use an iframe to set history in IE. Doing hashchange events yourself only takes about a page of code, and handling hash URLs is a relatively tiny portion of a client-side app:
That said, so many folks have asked for hashchange routing that perhaps it would be wise to build a Backbone plugin for it that smooths over the difference between pushState and hashchange...
Comments
For anyone interested in the idea of having multiple views in JavaScript (with their own URLs!), "Sammy" is a client-side JavaScript framework that's like Ruby's Sinatra: http://code.quirkey.com/sammy/
Indeed, what Ryan mentions sounds a bit like the ideas of Sammy, Backbone, and HTML5 local storage and offline caching blended together into a single tasty package.
If you'd like to browse an example Todos application (with annotated source code) that fuses Backbone.js and HTML5 local storage, here's a good place to start:
http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/examples/todos/inde...
The particular Backbone/LocalStorage integration works quite well for this little app, despite being simplistic:
http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/docs/backbone-local...
Edit: There seem to be a lot of folks who think that Sammy is the only way to get client-side routing -- nothing could be further from the truth. Sammy asks you to structure your entire app around an inappropriate faux-server-side API, and Sammy apps don't work correctly in Internet Explorer because Sammy doesn't use an iframe to set history in IE. Doing hashchange events yourself only takes about a page of code, and handling hash URLs is a relatively tiny portion of a client-side app:
https://gist.github.com/624773
That said, so many folks have asked for hashchange routing that perhaps it would be wise to build a Backbone plugin for it that smooths over the difference between pushState and hashchange...
Completely agree, and I'd definitely recommend an integrated history management component.
Yes, I think a Backbone plugin that provided that would be very well received.
+1 one for Sammy. I find Backbone too complex, but I like how Sammy doesn't impose almost anything.