Cleaning up after the great JavaScript Framework Explosion of 2006

For the past 3 years every web application I have worked on has used a JavaScript (JS) framework. Usually it is one of these guys:

• jQuery;
• Dojo;
• Prototype;

All of these guys are really good guys to know; especially if you find yourself in a dark alley being threatened by a mob of project managers wielding GWT manuals. These guys will save your bacon. I would go so far as to say that in this era of Ajaxified interfaces you really can't do without knowing one of these guys. You would be totally lost. Nowhere. If you don't know one of these guys then I pity you just like I pity the descendants of the lost tribe that never discovered fire and thus do all their cooking with friction. Nothing is more pitiful or unappetizing than a hamburger and fries that were cooked by rubbing them against a rock for 8 hours.

These libraries extend the JS language, make data exchange with the server more flexible, give you enhanced widgets and let you create effects on the page. Great! But should we really be doing all these things in JS? It seems like widgets and effects are more in line with what HTML and CSS are responsible for, not JS.

I hadn't really thought about this until today when I was reading about some of the new stuff in CSS3 (my favorites are the new selectors, transitions and animations). This is pretty exciting stuff that will really clean up alot of ugly things you end up doing in your JS code. For example, the Wolfire blog has a great, nontrivial sample of the sort of custom widgets that you can achieve with CSS3 animations and transitions. (see the animated gif, but please, do yourself a favor and go to the wolfire link above so you get the full context). This is a custom widget that is just pure CSS. You only use JS for activating state changes and sending data. You know, JS for behavior, CSS for appearance. Perfect.

It looks like CSS3 is going to put in order all the things that were dislodged by the "Great JavaScript Framework Explosion" of 2006. Of course I still want my JS frameworks, but let them help me with event handling, data transfer and writing concise, testable, maintainable JS code. Leave the appearance of my page for CSS to describe.