About the refs, I've been using a small helper:

    h.ref(this, 'some-element.children-element');

and its companion h.$ref(this, 'some-element.children..'); for the jquery version.

I don't have a strict rule of when using it, but sometimes it's cleaner than having lots of nested callback on an inner children.. I.e. I can just do:

    h.$ref(this, 'header.search.input')..

Which basically transforms to this.refs.header.refs.search.refs.input (IIRC)