HTMLstä

HTMLstä is a hypothetical markup language and build-time extension to HTML designed for creating dynamic, accessible web interfaces. It combines declarative templating with lightweight reactive bindings and a component model, producing standards-compliant HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that can run in modern browsers.

Originating in speculative web design discourse and fictional technology case studies, HTMLstä is not an official standard and has no browser-native support. Prototypes rely on transpilers and polyfills to simulate its behavior. The concept is used to illustrate how future tooling might integrate semantic HTML with component-based rendering.

Design goals include improving semantic clarity, accessibility, and portability while preserving the inspectability of the DOM. It aims to let developers write concise templates that compile to familiar HTML structures and vanilla JavaScript event handling, reducing runtime overhead compared with some heavy frameworks.

Core features include custom attributes with a distinct namespace, such as hs-bind for data binding, hs-if for conditional rendering, and hs-for for iteration. Components, slots, and scoped styles mirror familiar concepts from real frameworks, but the emitted output remains valid HTML that can be augmented with existing CSS and scripts. The compiler emits self-contained markup, with optional hydration for client-side interactivity.

Syntax examples in plain text include a template node like <div hs-bind="user.name" hs-if="user.loggedIn">Hello, {{user.name}}</div>, and a component declaration such as <template name="userCard">...</template>. Tooling is hypothetical and would include an htmlsta-compiler and optional bundler plugins, with adoption limited to experimental projects and academic discussions.

See also: HTML, web components, templating languages, progressive enhancement.