Comments on: SEO And Accessibility With HTML5 PushState, Part 2: Progressive Enhancement With Backbone.js

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:58:00 +0000

Michael, some info on bootstrapping your Backbone app with JSON data embedded in the page – http://backbonejs.org/#FAQ-bootstrap

By: Josh Habdas

Josh Habdas — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:07:00 +0000

Derick, I’ve been following your work for a few months and am a zealot for web standards. While I understand PE is achievable in a RIA using the “Holy Grail,” as Airbnb refers to it in their article “Our First Node.js App: Backbone on the Client and Server” (http://nerds.airbnb.com/weve-launched-our-first-nodejs-app-to-product), the a practical approach seems seems elusive and I continue to see many uninformed individuals pointing others towards the hashbang approach simply because Google is still hosting the documents.

Would you be able to list a set of related reading that might help those of us trying to improve “time to content” in a way congruent with usability and this here fine article? It seems to me that, because Google is considering page speed as a metric in the overall PR algo, and as a result of the concept of cloaking, there might be some disadvantages to sniffing crawlers and delivering a modified experience beyond what meets the eye for those looking for the quick fix.

Thanks for all you thought work and for writing in a clear, straightforward manner. And keep working on those conference talk proposals! ;)

By: mattcrider

mattcrider — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:01:00 +0000

Are there any frameworks or projects (PHP preferably) where this consideration is built in? E.g. a framework where controllers send back a fully function static html page by default but JSON data if requested by Backbone — and shares the same templates between the front end and back-end?

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 01:36:00 +0000

Hi Michael,

#1) standard data boot-strapping can be done here, where you render server side data directly in to the HTML as a javascript variable and then load it in to your models and collections.

#2) Both – whenever you are using pushState, your server and your backbone router have to both be able to handle the request appropriately.

hope that helps.

By: Michael Wu

Michael Wu — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:18:00 +0000

Thanks Derick, for this informative post. Following on Mark’s question, first of all, would you say there is a way for the server to send back the rendered HTML along with the data that will be used to populate the backbone models? Second, this is more of a clarification of backbone, using your method of server side rendering of the original DOM, it looks like the routing will be done through the server instead of the backbone router? Is that a good practice?

By: Fsdafdasdfa

Fsdafdasdfa — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:38:00 +0000

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By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:52:00 +0000

Great this is helping me a lot, even though I am not using rails(java backend, I plan to use mustache for templates as I can use them in java as well) but I think I can take over some stuff!

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:29:00 +0000

hi again,

i ran across this via twitter and thought you might get some value out of it: http://42floors.com/blog/posts/user-authentication-with-rails-and-backbone-js

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:19:00 +0000

I would not recommend building the model from the data in the html elements. You would end up storing a lot of data that is not needed in the DOM in order to make this work. It would also become very slow and cumbersome for the end user, as DOM queries are notoriously slow in comparison to loading the data as JSON.

So, yes, you’ll end up handling the data twice: once on the server to render the initial HTML, and then again on the client to populate the backbone models / collection.

SEO, accessibility and pushState aren’t “free” – there are tradeoffs involved, and this is one of them. If you need pushState, though, then the double processing of the data is a fairly small price to pay, in my experience.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:03:00 +0000

You are filling your collection with userData. Normally this data is available on the server. Do you suggest to load this data from the server again(so its called twice, 1. for rendering 2. for loading the collection or do you suggest to generate the model from the view(li) itself?