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What is HTMX

The Frustrated Programmer
December 10, 2025

Enhancing User Experience with HTMX: The Future of Dynamic Web Applications

Understand what is HTMX, the modern way of writing HTML+AJAX

No matter how proficient a web developer becomes, the journey invariably starts with writing HTML tags, doesn't it?

HTML forms the foundation of web pages, serving as the skeleton upon which content is built. Despite the emergence of modern frameworks, HTML remains the fundamental markup language, as it is universally understood by browsers.

HTML excels in displaying static content. However, the web demands more than static pages, it craves dynamic web applications. This is where JavaScript comes into play.

Traditionally, AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has been the go-to solution for adding dynamism to HTML pages, particularly when server interactions are involved.

Confused about where we are going? Ok, let us dive into an example.

I am writing a simple HTML page that displays a button Fetch Data when you click on that button, the page will send a request to our API endpoint https://api.example.com/data which will fetch the data from the endpoint and then it will display the fetched data inside the <div> with id data-container.

HTML 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Fetch Data with AJAX</title>
    <script>
      function fetchData() {
        const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
        xhr.onreadystatechange = function () {
          if (xhr.readyState === XMLHttpRequest.DONE) {
            if (xhr.status === 200) {
              const data = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText);
              const container = document.getElementById('data-container');
              container.innerHTML = data.message;
            } else {
              console.error('Error fetching data:', xhr.status);
            }
          }
        };
        xhr.open('GET', 'https://api.example.com/data', true);
        xhr.send();
      }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="data-container">Data will be displayed here</div>
    <button onclick="fetchData()">Fetch Data</button>
  </body>
</html>

This looks like a lot of code for a simple data fetch right? Imagine as the application scales up this will get even more difficult to manage dynamic content and server-dependent web applications and this is exactly where HTMX comes to the rescue. Now let's dive into the world of HTMX.

What exactly is HTMX

HTMX gives you access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and Server Sent Events directly in HTML, using attributes, so you can build modern user interfaces with the simplicity and power of hypertext.

It handles all the heavy lifting related to AJAX, CSS Transitions, Web sockets, etc., and lets us achieve the same functionality with simple attributes.

Let us implement the same functionality that we implemented using HTML + AJAX in the previous section but this time let's add the spice of HTMX.

HTML 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Fetch Data with HTMX</title>
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/htmx.org@1.6.1/dist/htmx.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div hx-get="https://api.example.com/data"
         hx-target="#data-container"
         hx-swap="innerHTML">
       Data will be displayed here
    </div>
    <button hx-get="#data-container">Fetch Data</button>
  </body>
</html>

I am not kidding, this is how we implement similar functionality using HTMX. If you observe we were able to replace the entire clutter due to AJAX requests with simple HTMX attributes such as

  • hx-get
  • hx-target
  • hx-swap

What exactly are these attributes?

hx-get will send a get request to the specified endpoint or URL.

hx-target is an attribute used to specify the HTML element where HTMX should insert the response from an AJAX request.

  • It can accept CSS selectors to target specific elements on the page.
  • When used in conjunction with hx-get or other similar attributes, hx-target determines where the fetched data should be displayed.

hx-swap is an attribute used to specify how HTMX should update the content of the target element after receiving a response from an AJAX request.

  • It determines the type of DOM manipulation to be performed, such as replacing the entire content (outerHTML) of the target element or just its inner content (innerHTML).

everything is as simple as that, HTML will handle all behind-the-scenes repeated sets of implementations makes the developer's life easy, and also makes code more readable.

HTMX offers a variety of attributes to make our HTML more dynamic and it is a worthy contender to consider when you are working with very small-scale applications that ideally don't require advanced JS frameworks such as angular, react, and Vue.

The journey of HTMX

The initial version of HTMX was released in 2020 and in no time it gained so much attention from the developer community also

HTMX finished 2nd in the 2023 JavaScript Rising Stars "Front-end Frameworks" category, just behind React (HTMX is a library, btw) and #10 overall!

and it is not right to compare this with react because react offers way more complex stuff than just writing JS inside HTML (yeah! I'm kidding about JSX). But HTMX is quite a good library in its own way and is very useful for basic applications with minimal server interactions and dynamic behaviour.

HTMX community is picking up its pace slowly and adding more weapons to its armoury day by day. you can explore more through their well-written and simple documentation here.

If this article inspired you to get your hands dirty with HTMX and if you build something cool with HTMX feel free to mention your git repo in the comments, that will serve as a great inspiration and guidance for many.

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