The thing I don't like about Shale Clay

I'm new to Clay, so forgive me in advance if any of these comments are said out of ignorance. Before I proceed with my gripe, I would like to say that I think Clay is pretty slick in its capabilities. Actually, I quite like Clay overall. In essence, it allows you to use 'standard' html to create dynamic web pages. When a page is served to a user, Clay replaces page content placeholders with dynamic markup. Pretty cool.

My main problem is the fact that 'standard' markup is not really standard after all. For example, to define placeholder html that should be replaced with dynamic content at runtime, you must specify a jsfid attribute inside whatever html tag you wish to make dynamic. The mere act of adding this simple attribute breaks the possibility of strictly conforming to the XHTML specification. If you run your page through a conformance check, it will obviously result in errors anywhere you use Clay-specific attributes. I also have to put up with numerous underlined warnings in my html editor telling me that the jsfid tag is 'undefined'.

Those who understand Clay and Java web development are thinking, "How else can you tag a component so that it can be replaced at runtime?" Well, you can't. And maybe that's my problem---that the XHTML spec doesn't allow extensions such that programmers can use dynamic scripting or other features without breaking strict XHTML convention.

So what's the solution? I don't really know. I guess you could say that I'd like to see the XHTML specification written in a way that both designers and developers can benefit. In the meantime, one way to mask (but not fix) the problem would be to create development tools that understand the semantics of Clay or other dynamic web technologies and toss out the warnings and errors instead of deluging the developer with them.