Native CSS transitions have quietly killed the strongest argument for client-side routing. Yet people keep building terrible apps instead of performant websites.

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Modern CSS features like View Transitions API and Speculation Rules have eliminated the main advantages of Single Page Applications (SPAs). Native browser capabilities now provide smooth page transitions, instant navigation, and better performance without the complexity, JavaScript overhead, and maintenance burden of client-side routing. Most websites would benefit from returning to Multi Page Application (MPA) architecture with modern CSS enhancements rather than building everything as an SPA.

It’s time for modern CSS to kill the SPA

📊 SPA vs MPA: a performance reality check

Don’t build a website like it’s an app

SPAs emerged not just to make things feel app-like, but to solve real architectural and development challenges:
Separation of concerns: Frontend and backend could evolve independently. The backend became a data provider (via REST or GraphQL), and the frontend handled rendering and interaction.
Component-level data fetching: Instead of fetching entire HTML documents, SPAs could request only the data needed for specific components, improving perceived performance and flexibility.
Stateful client-side logic: SPAs allowed for rich interactivity, persistent state, and dynamic UI updates without full page reloads.
Developer experience: Frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular introduced powerful abstractions for building complex UIs with reusable components and predictable state management.

This is a very narrow vision of what a SPA is about, and there maybe some validation if you take the authors narrow perspective. The synompsis is that we can achieve smooth transitions between pages using CSS instead of lots of Javascript, but the author assumes that is all SPA’s are about - a smooth navigation experience. As far as I know, there are no developments in CSS that are going replace the actual logic that is contained in a SPA application in React/Angular/Vue etc.

Strong opinions, weak proof. Not a single link to a CSS-only functioning alternative.

Amazing article 😀
It fits perfectly into my echo chamber though 🤔
I do believe this is the future. Especially with frameworks like Datastar.
But I would like to read a counter argument article. I’m struggling seeing the value of old fronted frameworks like React, Vue, and Svelt and Angular. Especially when you factor in the extra development, maintenance cost that comes with them.