Comment by vanderZwan
7 hours ago
That looks interesting, I'm not likely to write any jQuery any time soon, but I'll check out the source code to see if I can learn anything from it.
Regarding adoption levels, the JsViews website made me think I had accidentally toggled the "Desktop Site" option in my Iceweasel browser, I wonder if that scared people off. Or perhaps it's because, as others mentioned, most jQuery development these days is in legacy codebases where the devs are not allowed to add any new libraries, reducing the adoption rates of any new jQuery libraries even more than you'd expect based on the raw nrs of jQuery users.
(the website does work though, and it loads fast. Which is something I've always appreciated about jQuery based sites still alive today. The only thing I'm missing is any indication of how big it is when minified + gzipped. EDIT: jsrender.js is 33.74 kB, jsrender.min.js a mere 12.82 kB)
I’ve been collaborating with Boris, the author of JsViews, and we do have plans to modernize the website—which speaks directly to your point about first impressions and adoption. You’re absolutely right that presentation matters; if something looks dated, people may disengage before digging any deeper.
I also raised the jQuery dependency concern with Boris for exactly the reason you mentioned: many teams automatically rule out anything that requires jQuery, especially outside of legacy codebases. That’s a real barrier today.
For what it’s worth, a jQuery-free version may happen. Boris is actively exploring it, but he’s making no promises—it’s a non-trivial problem and would effectively require a full rewrite rather than a simple refactor.