HTML Reuse

One of the great features of any web application framework is the HTML template. These templates allow developers to inject variables into the page. In fact, most templates allow logic to be placed directly into the HTML page (which isn't a good idea, but not really the point here).

The server, by using HTML templates, can iterate over data sets and churn out HTML that is sent to the browser. This, in effect, saves us from storing the static page structure that is then sent to the client.

This is all well and good on the server side, but what about the client? It is given a static structure to display. The browser, behind the scenes is rendering the HTML into pixel values but the HTML itself is static.

This means that HTML that can often be computed is in a static form instead. Would it not make more sense to have the Javascript of a web application build these display elements based on application data returned from the server? Maybe not the entire display but I'm sure there are many repetitive elements that can be computed rather than delivered statically.