You don't need to regenerate any HTML and changes are instant. Also, I honestly don't think one can burn through too much CPU with occasional JavaScript. This is some hardcore environmentalism.
I've been joking for a few years that it's only a matter of time until some joker implements a browser in javascript/html5 and the rest of the web development community enthusiastically adopts using it as standard practice. I'm starting to fear that this is more of a possibility than I initially thought.