Connect vs Express

Express is a popular lightweight web server framework. Its main features include a router, utilities for preparing http responses, and plugins for alternative templating methods.

Express is built on Connect which is an http server and middleware ecosystem. It is designed as a base on which to build frameworks. The developers are emphasizing this design split. For example, Connect no longer includes a router.

Dispatch is a more expressive router that treats routes as a data structure instead of calls to configuration function.

Quip (by the same author) provides a number of utilities for http responses.

There are dozens of template modules to consider. Any can be used directly in writing the http response without the Express conventions. Also, we will be using client-side templating. With tools such as backbone.layoutmanager or Derby.js.