in plain htmx, you can target an area that doesn't disrupt a playing video (e.g. the comments box appending to the comments) or you can use a morphing algorithm that disrupts the DOM less.
i have my own morphing algorithm (and a corresponding htmx plugin that allows you to use it) called idiomorph:
With htmx, you plan and prepare partial page updates yourself and htmx swaps them in for you.
With React, you get to maintain the entire npm toolchain that your app depends on, including fun things like 'React 19 will no longer patch the fetch() function, so you have to handle double-fetch manually'.
Yeah, it doesn't really read like it matches much with the claim of the article that htmx is the rebirth of the MPA.
But then on the other hand, the picture that builds in my mind turns more and more into "SPA, but everything is declarative" (except for extensions to the declarative toolkit that are easy to keep separated from domain code), and that could really be quite awesome. More so when you come from an MPA background anyways. (or when your codebase comes from an MPA background!)
i have my own morphing algorithm (and a corresponding htmx plugin that allows you to use it) called idiomorph:
https://github.com/bigskysoftware/idiomorph/
i've also been working with the chrome team to get a feature added they are calling "atomic moves":
https://github.com/whatwg/dom/issues/1255
this would allow us to move elements around in the DOM without losing things like play state or focus or whatever
very excited for this last idea, I think it will be a huge boon for the web in general, not just for htmx