I started up a new project to create a template engine for Ruby web apps. The beginnings of it are on github here. It's very, very rough, so don't judge yet. :-)

I know there are a ton of template engines out there. But here's my complaint with them: often the person developing the front end of an app is primarily an HTML/CSS/JavaScript developer. They may not know Ruby at all. So template engines like Markaby and Hoshi are out. ERB is the most HTML-like template engine, but a) it's still got Ruby mixed into it, so it isn't ideal for strictly front-end developers, and b) it's a mixture of Ruby and HTML, which is ugly and spaghetti-ish.

Enter Beholder.

Beholder is a template engine comprised of HTML tags. Dynamic behavior is accomplished through the use attributes. So, for example, if you have a page and you want to show a chunk of it conditionally, you could do something like this:

I've been thinking a bit about template engines in Ruby. There's a ton of them out there. Here's a good review of a bunch of them. We generally use either Hoshi or Markaby at my job right now. For our purposes, these have been great. We all work on all aspects of a project, from front to back, and we'd all rather write Ruby than HTML. However, in several jobs I've had, we've had a front-end developer doing all the HTML and CSS. The problem is that people who really specialize in front-end development often don't know Ruby. So Hoshi and Markaby are out. In those situations, we've used ERB templates. But then you've got Ruby and HTML mixed together, and that's never pretty. What I'd really like is a template engine that just looks like HTML, with no Ruby mixed into it. Something along the lines of Python's Kid, or Java's Tapestry templates. I've been looking around a bit and haven't found anything like that yet in Ruby. Sounds like time to spin up a new project! More to come...