Meta-OS: The Perfect Framework

Comparing the Stacks

Meta-OS (Tiny Templating and bundled libraries), versus equivalent "Hello World" installations with Angular and React. The comparison is a little unfair - Angular and React offer far fewer features out of the box. Others are similarly heavy in terms of server cost and stack complexity: Vue: 199MB, Marko: 107MB, Ember: 97MB, Aurelia: 85MB.
All these frameworks, despite their size, are missing many of the basics inside Meta-OS.

Why Meta-OS?

Build Tools...

...are annoying

get rid of them and build on the fly in a second :)

...don't create standalone portable apps

enable "Electron mode".

CSS Preprocessors...

...force you to learn a new language, and don't compress the CSS

KISS! Smart coders avoid bloatware like SCSS, and WebComponents - because we like the C in CSS. Adding new attributes to STYLE nodes gives us all we need for efficient, compressed, auto-prefixed CSS.

...forgot about theming

enable instant global switching of button styles, colours, 3D backgrounds, fonts and zoom.

HTML Templators...

...force you to learn a new language

KISS! Code up super widgets in plain old HTML5, which are turbocharged when parsed.

...forgot about client-side rendering

provide a templating engine that runs on web browsers - with all quirks taken care of :)

...drop support for old browsers

send an extra 44k polyfill to IE9 users, so they can view the site without CSS enchancements. Provide a no-script version of each page for text-only browsers.

...cannot compress their output or send multiple pages at once

send a cachable compressed archive of all templates and styles after loading, then going from page to page is instantaneous.

API Designs...

...are a mess

KISS! We are using JS for server and client libraries, so by choosing MongoDB as our database, those commands are also written in JS :)  We can safely run queries remotely from the browser, and filter out forbidden commands on the server.

...assume TLS is secure

encrypt all comms in a way that makes HTTPS a superfluous luxury.

...don't cater for drip-feeding required imports on-demand

create a solid clientside import/require equivalent, that gives you what you need, and remembers what you've got.

Application life cycle

Flux and Redux are horribly complicated. It's only a fucking WebApp!

Use TiTe instead. Provide essential shortcut methods, but allow devs to work alongside horrors like jQuery.

Full-Stack "Solutions"...

...cause more problems than they solve

stick with 3 languages: HTML, Javascript and CSS. Use key ES6 features which are auto-ES5-ized to support even good old Internet Explorer 9.

...mash up HTML, CSS and Javascript together in weird new langauges

ensure that templating, styling and logic have clear boundaries. Don't force people to work on the DOM or stylesheets using JSX, Sass or other short-lived languages.

...are massive, and require more knowledge than the average coder can be expected to know

if one person can understand the whole system, and the distro fits on a floppy disk, it's gotta be easier to learn than most.

...contain huge, bug-ridden 3rd-party modules

hand pick the best and absolutely necessary, and rewrite anything that can be improved.

...don't come with the range of apps you would expect with an operating system

provide a file browser with multimedia support, administration tools and at least one game :)

MVC...

...is totally inapplicable to webapps

keep the server dumb and the client smart.

...transmits irrevelant minutia about the client and mirrors it serverside

use the server purely for serving - the client can look after itself

Interfaces and Libraries...

...are stuck in the stone age

move beyond standard HTML with TiTe. Present an intuitive shell, and do the heavy-lifting for web designers. Provide useful components, like the new <area> tag and the by-example helpsystem - populated simply by adding help atttributes to elements.

...all do mobile badly

be mobile-perfect out of the box, and use a Service Worker to enable the installation of a PWA for offline browsing.

...all copy iOS

think differently.

...are slow

Slash the overhead for inital page download to 32KB for flat HTML and 64KB for interactive PWAs.

...don't do instantaneous navigation using hashChange and pushState, or remember scrollbar positions

provide a simple mechanism for geniune navigation or auto-navigation of all types.

Conclusion

Use Meta-OS.

The only stack with all this, plus a multi-player, multidimensional filesystem with plug-ins for groups, chat, events, contacts, tasks, markets and questionnaires, AND media editors, a world map, and library components.