I'm also very much looking forward to this reusable, component-based approach using Javascript, because I'm currently enjoying using a similar paradigm on a project I'm working on with the Seaside framework in Smalltalk. I don't know if I can convince anyone to use Smalltalk for a web project, but if I can keep this same approach and stick to JS that will make my life much better! That being said, here's a little bit about Seaside in case you're interested in trying something different.
Seaside makes it extremely easy to embed multiple components within or alongside each other. It also has the ability to sequence the display of components in a modal fashion while synchronizing the client state (even when using the back button), which can be good for some types of wizard-style workflows.
In terms of using Smalltalk, the message-passing syntax is elegant and simple to comprehend. And the ability of Smalltalk to aid in debugging is fantastic: if you running web app experiences an error, you will get a debugger with a stack trace that includes the source code of everything in the stack. Simply make the changes necessary to fix the bug, and then resume the execution of your program. If you like REPL style coding, this is quite similar, albeit through a GUI. This has proven invaluable to iterative development.
Seaside makes it extremely easy to embed multiple components within or alongside each other. It also has the ability to sequence the display of components in a modal fashion while synchronizing the client state (even when using the back button), which can be good for some types of wizard-style workflows.
In terms of using Smalltalk, the message-passing syntax is elegant and simple to comprehend. And the ability of Smalltalk to aid in debugging is fantastic: if you running web app experiences an error, you will get a debugger with a stack trace that includes the source code of everything in the stack. Simply make the changes necessary to fix the bug, and then resume the execution of your program. If you like REPL style coding, this is quite similar, albeit through a GUI. This has proven invaluable to iterative development.
There are two great free resources to learning Seaside. The first is Dynamic Web Development with Seaside: http://book.seaside.st/book Another good one is An Introduction to Seaside: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/seaside/tutorial