Abstract. Several works [20,22] have tried to enforce strict isolation between the model and the view in template based web applications by restricting the computing possibilities of the used templates. From the point of view of graphic designers this is a limitation that may make their work difficult. Besides, in this paper we state that this claimed strict isolation is impossible to achieve in practice for HTML template systems. We propose another approach to study and to attain an effective separation between model and view that does not necessarily restrict the expressive power of the template: the double-model approach. Finally we present an implementation of this approach in a renewed template system called JST2.