It always baffle me how little people here talk about DurandalJS (that uses knockout for its bindings). It is a nice alternative to angular... and it uses knockout which is awesome. If you like knockout, you should really take a look at it.
I'd like to invite you to take a look at a library that I've been working on over the past few years called Falcon (http://stoodder.github.io/falconjs/). Falcon is an MVC structure around Knockout that is useful for small-large scale single page applications. I'll be releasing v0.10.0 which includes support for Knockout 3.1 and some other large changes within the next week or so. Always looking for feedback especially from those who've used similar libraries (Durandal). Regardless, I really dig Knockout, glad to see the continued work on it :)
If you're not developing SPA apps you'll likely just need data binding (knockout) only. I've had many situations where I don't need the routing and other functions of a SPA framework like Durandal. However, Durandal is pretty modular so you can tap into whatever part you need since it uses require.js.
Exactly this. Most people's huge, monolithic apps should be partitioned out into smaller, more modular apps. They're easier for multiple developers to work on, they're easier to spec out, they can have their own optimization/iteration cycle, etc.
An example, we have an app that so far consists of about 25 individual SPAs. It was originally an SPA, but we ran into tons of problems with routing issues that cropped up, and realization that when the user uses the apps, in any given session they'd probably only use 20% of what it offers. Developers get to work quickly on their modules, there's no up front initialization/download of the entire apps. Some of the apps are more prototype quality to get the job done, some have been refactored several times. But they all form a cohesive experience. It's also nice when you're developing a group of functionality that you don't have to start the app at the beginning.
Most users won't even know when their in a SPA vs Multi-page SPA.
