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Archive for May 20th, 2005

HTML as Model

Friday, May 20th, 2005

So I had a random thought the other day….

What if we think about the Web this way:

  • XTHML = Model
  • CSS = View
  • {Java/EMCA/DOM}scripting = controller

Of course, design purists (and even not-so-purists) will argue with this analogy and I admit that its not a perfect analogy, but the XHTML=Model part might be a useful way to think of things. Let me explain….

The other day, several of us were discussing the ironicly incompatible trends that are occuring on the web recently- AJAX and HTML-as-API/Microformats. Both these technologies are very cool, but, unfortunately, AJAX-style web development tends to make consuming Microformats more difficult (though not impossible).

As a compromise between these two movements, thinking of the XHTML as a Model could be useful. Think of the XHTML as just data which can then be viewed and dispalyed with CSS + DOMscripting or consumed by agents that are looking for structured data.

Just an idea that’d I’d like to cast into the blogosphere for discussion. Whatcha think?