So this week I was able to get my ass in gear and learn Backbone.js I’ve started migrating this site over to use it so I can try some ideas out. Specifically, I want to try adding a comments feature that would hopefully change the existing paradigms as to how comments are tracked over time.

But, to do so effectively, I need to be able to manipulate the DOM pretty heavily while still having very close ties to the data on the back end. I don’t know exactly how that will all work but for now, I’ve separated out a Backbone version of the site over at /posts/backbone.

It’s nothing more then a list of the existing posts on this site but it allows you to see that the page doesn’t reload all of the content when you use the navigation links attached to each post.

And, you’re not authorized to change or delete any of the posts so go ahead and try. You’ll see that it’s just backbone updating the DOM and that the data doesn’t actually update on the backend.

Pretty fun! Hopefully I can get the site all switched over soon…

EDIT: Actually, fuck that. Backbone and Rails still don’t play very well together. It’s got a lot of overhead and I need to do some serious rewrites on the back end to provide the correct JSON endpoints for Posts before I migrate the front end over to Backbone. It’ll get there someday but for now, I’ve got better things to do.