Is this just AJAX?

I’ve seen this kind of thing on Twitter referring to htmx:

I would encourage looking at it with a fresh mind, and trying it first, instead of saying “it’s just AJAX”.

If by AJAX we mean “communication between client and server outside of a full-page request”, then yes htmx is AJAX. Just like when you use fetch() in client-side JS or Axios or react-query or any data fetching library.

Other than that, there’s nothing that resembles old-school AJAX.

With old-school AJAX, there was TON of JavaScript involved.

Try reading one of those 2006-2007 books about AJAX and you’ll see.

Between starting requests, and processing the response, it was a lot.

htmx is a declarative approach at data fetching and in general client-server HTTP communication, and also, it’s a declarative approach at defining what happens after the response.

It’s an HTML extension, really.

It offers an incredible layer of abstraction and it can do a lot of work for us.

And this makes a world of difference.

Like using p { color: red } in CSS, or using the CSS Paint API to achieve the same effect.

Even ChatGPT doesn’t recommend this: