GS-Docs

A testbed for a new philosophy of web application architecture.

Potential names for this web architecture

• Document-driven
• Semantic document
• Neoclassical
• SEO-first (ugh)

Core Values & Guiding Principles

• Uphold and celebrate the nature of the web as a document platform without limiting our ability
• Keep architectural complexity to an absolute minimum
• Backwards compatible

The Web is Documents, so Documents Are In Control

An application is, in general:

• A composition of documents
• A means of experiencing, navigating, and interacting with its documents

Specifically:

• The fundamental container unit, and primary view, is the HTML document: one per URL (except for hashes)
• HTML documents compose microapplications into an application experience, with the document as its centerpiece
• All Content is delivered with uncomplicated, semantically rich HTML
• All Application functionality is implemented in Javascript or WASM and delivered with custom elements, services workers

The Source Of Data is the Document

• The primary source of data available to the front-end is, naturally, the document
• As such, all data to be shown, filtered or otherwise manipulated by application functionality is almost always already present in the document.
• To display different data is to navigate to a different document

Progressive enhancement all the way down

• An application is inherently a progressive enhancement of a set of documents
• Being documents, all documents are viewable, navigable and accessible without JS
• Being semantically rich, documents should be usable, if not beautiful, without CSS

Dynamic vs. Static Content

• Documents are statically generated whenever possible
• Fully dynamic or personalized content can be:
  • Placed in a document, visualized by a microapplication backed by an API
  • A document, either:
    • Static, rendered offline/on-demand
    • Rendered on the fly by a server

State Across Pages

• All Application state is that must be persisted across pages lives in IndexedDB