I'm looking to understand what the key benefits of using Backbone over a jQuery Plugin for this scenario:

• I have 5 main sections of my application that users navigate to.
• I use oAuth2.0 for authentication and to access the application (all sections).
• One of the sections has 4 columns across the screen. Each column is an unordered list.

I want to allow users to filter and sort these lists. In addition, when a user clicks on a list item it takes them to an edit page (different URL) where the user can edit the details of that particular list item. I would prefer to do this via modal or something similar that removes loading a new page.

Solution 1

I was thinking about using a jQuery plugin (like http://codecanyon.net/item/jquery-jplist-plugin/full_screen_preview/1860318?ref=lvraa) and ajax calls on my existing code to sort and filter li elements across the lists. Doing this I would probably keep the edit page as is or using a modal.

Solution 2

However, after looking at Backbone I was thinking about using it instead of a jQuery plugin. Backbone would handle sorting and filtering the lists plus the editing of the lists. The user could then navigate to other parts of the application (at different urls), which would not be built using Backbone.

What are the benefits of using Backbone for this?

I'm new to Backbone and not sure if this is overkill for what I'm trying to do? Another thing that concerns me is the authentication part when editing one of the list elements.