WeAreDevelopers LIVE • Jun 5, 2024

Snappy UI needs no Single-Page Application

Clemens Helm

Tired of bloated JavaScript bundles and fragile state management? Discover how HTML-over-the-wire delivers snappy, SPA-like interactivity with virtually zero custom client-side code.

Pause

Mute

Enter Fullscreen

#1 about 4 min

The era of server-side web development

How early web applications relied exclusively on server-side rendering and full page reloads for every interaction.

#2 about 4 min

The introduction of AJAX and asynchronous rendering

Fetching data asynchronously enabled parallel interactions and faster response times without reloading the entire page.

#3 about 5 min

The complexity costs of early AJAX applications

Asynchronous programming introduced new challenges like callback hell, hard-to-maintain spaghetti code, and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.

#4 about 4 min

The shift toward single-page applications

Moving away from HTML snippets to JSON data and state management enabled rich client-side interactions and virtual routing.

#5 about 6 min

Hidden complexity and structural issues of SPAs

Large bundle sizes, duplicated validation logic, and memory leaks demonstrate the operational overhead of framework-heavy frontends.

#6 about 9 min

Building interactive UIs with Turbo Frames

Replacing targeted HTML fragments from server responses enables interactive component updates without full page reloads.

#7 about 5 min

Advantages of server-driven UI approaches

Keeping presentation logic on the server reduces client dependencies and ensures state consistency without custom JavaScript.

#8 about 5 min

Choosing the right architecture for web applications

While offline support requires SPAs, page-based applications benefit from server-rendered setups for better initial load speeds.

#9 about 2 min

Balancing complexity and technology tradeoffs

Evaluating architectural choices ensures that new technologies do not introduce unnecessary complexity for simple use cases.

Matching moments

4:22 min

Rethinking the architecture of single page web applications

Jeremy Keith · World Congress 2021

3:37 min

Overview of single page application architecture

Thomas Konrad · LIVE

1:51 min

Eliminating server roundtrips using SPA client frameworks

Julian Burr

Julian Burr · World Congress 2026 Europe

3:31 min

The reality of single-page applications versus legacy monoliths

Alexander Lichter · LIVE

3:38 min

Understanding the evolution of modern frontend complexity

Frederik Pietzko

Frederik Pietzko · World Congress 2025

2:27 min

Questioning the default use of single page applications

Bene

Bene +1 · World Congress 2024

More from WeAreDevelopers LIVE

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Is CSS Catching Up to Flash? thumbnail

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Is CSS Catching Up to Flash?

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Bramus Van Damme

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Project Chopin: Make Your Team and Agents Play Along thumbnail

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Project Chopin: Make Your Team and Agents Play Along

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Krzysztof Cieślak

Fake or News - AI Toothbrushes, Carrier Pigeon Tech & Life on Mars - Krzysztof Cieślak thumbnail

Fake or News - AI Toothbrushes, Carrier Pigeon Tech & Life on Mars - Krzysztof Cieślak

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Open Source Agent Toolkits thumbnail

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Open Source Agent Toolkits

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Eddie Jaoude

Fake or News - AI Music Detectors, Translating Ancient Languages & Tiny Heads in Teslas - Eddie Jaoude thumbnail

Fake or News - AI Music Detectors, Translating Ancient Languages & Tiny Heads in Teslas - Eddie Jaoude

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney

Fake or News: AI Agents Hire Each Other, Spider-Man Ads in Cars & RAM Thieves - Marc Plogas thumbnail

Fake or News: AI Agents Hire Each Other, Spider-Man Ads in Cars & RAM Thieves - Marc Plogas

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Marc Plogas

Upcoming sessions on this topic

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 12:50–13:20

Stage 7

Architecting Agentic Apps: WebMCP, A2UI, and Agent Experience

Ankita Sood

Sr. Principal Engineer @ Secureworks | Angular GDE

Ankita Sood

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 14:50–15:20

Stage 4

How to generate business value through performance optimizations

Nikolai Sidiropulo

Software Engineer at Meta

Nikolai Sidiropulo

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 17:30–18:00

Stage 7

Full Stack with Flutter - are we there yet?

Nemanja Stošić

Senior Flutter Developer

Nemanja Stošić

World Congress 2026 North America

September 25, 2026 · 15:30–16:00

Stage 6

Small LLM in your Browser: Huge Opportunities for Web Applications

Daniel Ostrovsky

UI/UX Architect at Payoneer | AI Architect | Full Cycle Development Expert | Public Speaker | Open Source Contributor |

Daniel Ostrovsky

World Congress 2026 North America

September 24, 2026 · 16:00–18:00

Stage 10

Reprompting the Wheel? Why AI Won’t Save Your Content Platform

Benni Mack, Tom Warwick

Benni Mack

Tom Warwick

World Congress 2026 North America

September 25, 2026 · 11:00–11:30

Stage 2

Build Fast, Deploy Faster: Cross Platform AI development in 2026

Charlie Cheever

CEO & Co-Founder of Expo

Charlie Cheever

Related videos

The Lean Web thumbnail

JS Congress • almost 5 years ago

The Lean Web

Chris Ferdinandi

Out-of-Order Streaming — The Future of Web Development thumbnail

World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

Out-of-Order Streaming — The Future of Web Development

Julian Burr

Why HTMX is crushing React, Vue & Svelte. thumbnail

World Congress 2024 • about 2 years ago

Why HTMX is crushing React, Vue & Svelte.

Bene, Felix Eckhardt

How to kill JavaScript from your Stack with HTMX and Kotlin thumbnail

World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

How to kill JavaScript from your Stack with HTMX and Kotlin

Frederik Pietzko

Independently together: how micro-applications improve developer experience + app performance thumbnail

World Congress 2022 • over 4 years ago

Independently together: how micro-applications improve developer experience + app performance

Bilal Cinarli

Multiple Ships to the Island - Micro Frontends & Island Architectures thumbnail

LIVE • over 2 years ago

Multiple Ships to the Island - Micro Frontends & Island Architectures

Florian Rappl

Related articles

DC

Daniel Cranney

View Transition API: Adding Single-Page Transitions With Just HTML, CSS and JS

Over the past few years, you’ve likely noticed an increase in websites and applications featuring transitions that take place as you change page. Perhaps it’s a simple crossfade between the current...

12 months ago

An image transitioning in size

DC

Daniel Cranney

3 JavaScript-Free Techniques for Accordions, Dialogs, and Table of Contents

If you’ve ever read the WeAreDevelopers Magazine before, you’ll know we love showing developers how to take advantage of native platform features and avoid over-engineering UI’s with frameworks or ...

8 months ago

A woman on a laptop with a table of contents showing on the screen

BB

Benedikt Bischof

Web Development Best Practices: What The Data Tells us

Welcome to the new issue of the WeAreDevelopers Live Talk series. This article recaps an interesting talk by Laurie Voss who gave advice about the best practices in web development. What you will l...

over 4 years ago

Web Development Best Practices: What The Data Tells us

CH

Chris Heilmann

Dev Digest 139 - Soft and hard queries

News and ArticlesLet's start with Amelia Wattenberger's excellent essay Bridging the hard and the soft talking about humans and data. Do you sometimes also miss aspects of the early web like a lack...

almost 2 years ago

Dev Digest 139 - Soft and hard queries

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.

Senior Software Engineer, Angular

Barcelona, Spain

Remote Backend Caching ReactJS

Mid/Senior Full-Stack Engineer (Web-first)

SMG Swiss Marketplace Group

Valbonne, France

Experienced Remote Kotlin Backend ReactJS

Frontend Engineer

Berlin, Germany

Expert €80k–140k NestJS ReactJS TypeScript

about 2 months ago

Senior AI Frontend Engineer

TeamViewer Germany GmbH,

Austin, TX, United States

Expert ReactJS TypeScript Material UI

Junior Frontend Engineer

Berlin, Germany

Starter €60k–75k NestJS ReactJS Backend

Remote Senior Full-Stack Engineer

Expert £63k–98k Remote Redis Docker Datadog