That is a UI design issue: you don’t gave to use those, and if you do, it’s up to you to use them right. Web comes with a lot of limitations, many of those widgets obviously don’t make sense in the browser; heck they probably don’t make sense on the desktop but that is less obvious. With web, simplicity is enforced out of nescessary limitation, and this has turned out to be good for users.

From a programming perspective, modern desktop UI libraries are much more powerful and have less limitations. How you use that power is up to you and your UXD, however.

It's because you have been conditioned to have low expectations by web apps.

I've been programming computers since the time they came with two 5.25 inch floppies with green text monitors and have seen all UI paradigms since then. Maybe I have a right to have a point of view?

The standard desktop design paradigms were built by programmers for programmers - a lazy way to approach things leading to clunky to use software. The dog eat dog world of the web and rise of touch has forced us to turn to designers to play a huge role in simplifying interfaces and flows.

I'll see your 5.25 floppies and green text monitors and raise you 8" floppies and smooth-scrolling VT100s.

Agree with your opinions, though, you old fart.

>The standard desktop design paradigms were built by programmers for programmers - a lazy way to approach things leading to clunky to use software. The dog eat dog world of the web and rise of touch has forced us to turn to designers to play a huge role in simplifying interfaces and flows.

UI design and HCI has been a thing for 4+ decades.

The web is a very poor example of those things -- not to mention it has forgotten decades of research and best practices.

What it has is just ubiquity and easy access.