It seems as if the author is on the way to rediscovering the idea of Unobtrusive JavaScript, aka the RSJS pattern (Reasonable System for JavaScript):

http://ricostacruz.com/rsjs/

The main difference is that Unobtrusive JavaScript relies on HTML5 data attributes rather than misusing CSS classes.

Perhaps the most well-known example of the Unobtrusive JavaScript approach are the AJAX helpers of Rails:

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/working_with_javascript_in_rai...