1) Amateurs can use it easily and poorly 2) It is not taught in computer science class 3) HTML/CSS is not programming 4) HTML docs attempt to be responsive/liquid as opposed to traditional screen painters.

These are actually good things (and #2 can be fixed) but they represent a significant philosophical shift that most traditional developers don't want to accept.

i thoroughly agree with this if you say "interface implementation technology" instead of "interface design technology". i also believe anyone who disagrees has never fully explored the various print/console/mobile/mfc/actionscript worlds. i mean... have you ever even USED something like pagemaker?

Edit: damn, it is more than 15 years already. I've brought home the first HTML spec printout in 1996 and got first money for the website I've built in 1998. Still remember fixing <center> bug in IE3 when it came out…

So that makes it 20 years. (dangit!)

Anyway, I think javascript made a mess of it. The point of the web was to link documents. JS makes links obsolete, as they now are relegated to JS-app entry points.

before I get too much in the weeds, I'm gonna go read the article.

Cassowary is hands down the best tech for interfaces.

Given my experience with the dozens of UI frameworks we enjoyed since the early 80's I cannot agree.

It cannot be called anything else other than a big hack.

There's no reason we can't keep backward compatibility as long as it's desired.

No one is "throwing away the web", what ever that even means.

We can always put the current stuff in a nice museum and pay tribute to the technological importance it achieved during the evolution of the web! vs an evolution of any seriously flawed specific piece of technology.

Also, this really is not a "want", rather the real problems are creating real needs.

That is exactly what Servo is doing.

Does "ditch" and "junk" mean something other than the common usages of these terms to you? The only assumption I'm making is that you're writing in english.

I was suggesting to ditch specific technologies, not the "web" as you put it. So it's... what the web means... That I referred to.

Go on. Use them. I dare you. See how long you last.

or invent your own platform and see how quickly everyone switches over to it. I'm sure the only thing stopping this from happening is nobody has tried. Sure!

<section> and <article> are new semantic containers for content.

or .main or any number of similar classes.

<main>?

I didn't say that html/css/doesn't need improvement. that's changing the subject. The question is: why do the people here so eager to "ditch" (as in totally discard) html/css/js.

Oh yes, I do remember those nice <layers> in NN4 and that CSS wannabe mingled with JS.

For what I am grateful is Firefox (before the rise of chrome). However I think the proper mindset left Mozilla together with Blake Ross and all that's left is posturing and politics.

Mozilla is making Firefox and helping keep the web open with new APIs, standards. It is helping with the politics side regarding net neutrality. It is helping millions learn how to build web pages thru webmaker.org program that teaches web literacy and moving onward to teach app making with Mozilla Appmaker. Mozilla is helping bring the next billion people online by working with partners to offer affordable mobile devices on emerging markets where people can't afford computers or high end devices. Thats more than posturing.... Thats the result of a global community of volunteers, staff and partners working together to make the web and the world a better place for everybody.

The web is more than the browser. The network protocols is what matter, not the browser.

Aren't you the least bit curious why it succeeded despite not being to your taste? Do you think it's just accidental? That the laws of physics and rationality were suspended for one brief glorious moment in the 1990's? Are you a web creationist?

Or do you believe that there's an actual answer?

If we'd started with xml compatible markup (all tags must close in order), and no browsers supported a quirks mode... we'd have much cleaner web browser engines and a much more usable web today.

I think that JS has a few quirks as well... so does CSS.. JS and CSS came after HTML, and even then have grown/distorted a bit. XHTML broke too many things, so we went pragmatic with HTML5. Just the same, no "new wheel" will get adopted in this space whole-sale. People have ditched XHTML and run back to HTML5.

I think a lot of things could be better, and will get better... so long as there are billions of pages/sites out there as-is, quirks mode browsers aren't going away.

Sigh.

Just the same, it started with well-formedness being loose, and continued from there.

The well-formedness thing is, sorry to be blunt, a totally crazy thing to complain about.

Every single platform that has any popularity introduces rough edges like this over time. It's impossible not to because every single bug that introduces relaxations gets baked in as content comes to rely on it. It is impossible to ever remove those relaxations, and really, it's totally fine.

There is a cost to lack of well-formedness, but on the list of problems with the web it is waaaaay waaaay down there.

Just how exactly do you archive that content anyway? Anything you "buy" on those platforms is not something you own. It's something you're licensing for short term use. Doesn't sound like a great outlet for culture to me. It sounds like a death trap.

  > Just how exactly do you archive that content anyway?

  > Anything you "buy" on those platforms is not something you own.

Define "win". From my point of view, the web has not only won desktop, but utterly dominated it, and relegated the rest of the OS to a mere substrate for webpages. The only things it hasn't really replaced are photoshop, final cut and protools. It's only a matter of time.

"Why should I archive anything? I don't archive web pages I visit either"

oh boy. Paging Jason Scott. Jason Scott on aisle 12.

" I don't care. I change my phone: they are already there. I get new Mac:"

I'm glad you can thrive only on corporately produced content you license for brief periods of time. Many people out in the world are not corporations, and produce things that they care about. Many use computers to do this. Most care about the thing they made, and not about the tech they made it with. And so it ends up in these closed off little data silos and proprietary formats- not only are these things not backed up, they can't be backed up.

And then those people die, and there is nothing left of that person except what they made on the iPad with iOS6. The apps the things live inside are not compatible with the newer iOS. When that iPad dies, it's like the father, the lost son, the missing daughter- they die for a second time.

But you know, it's good that owning that stuff doesn't matter to you, and therefore should not matter to anyone else.

ta.

Also, having books and movies stuck in your amazon or apple account is convenient for consumption, but horrible for creation. You can't DO anything with that content. I've wanted to extract interesting stuff from books I own before and was forced to make screengrabs. If you don't understand what's wrong with the media rental model, go read "the right to read" by stallman.

Well, yes, technically, we as tech savvy people could, but the commoners (not to say technophobics), they don't know how.

and that is how it is designed. You don't need backup, it's in the cloud. What happens when it is not anymore ?

It is not owning but rather preserving that is the concern. Is everything worth preserving though, I don't know.

By the way, you have drifted away from discussing the technological aspects of the Web. This line of argument doesn't help establish why HTML/JavaScript/CSS are better.

Apps cannot.

That's why HTML matters.

the better course is evolution, not revolution.

Candles oil lamps, and torches were pretty good at providing light at night in the 18th century, then there came electricity and the light bulb, everyone slowly threw away their candles for something better. Many people tried to design better candles instead of switching over. Candles that would burn brighter and longer, candles that would not blow out as easily and did not put off as much smoke, but you know what? These were was mere evolutionary changes and could not "hold a candle" to the revolutionary benefits of the light bulb.

Sure it took a lot of work for people to take their oil lamps and candle fixtures off of the walls and ceilings. It was a lot of work to run wiring and put up new electric fixtures. But the time spent was an investment. Eventually it led to a lot better solution and a lot less effort in total.

You are one of these guys who was using and evolving candles and oil lamps. You just can't see the bigger picture.

These HNers who are not happy with still being forced to use candles are the real innovators... The technologists. You who are happy with the candle are merely paint and canvas artists.

Paint and canvas artists in the 80s and 90s started to scoff when computer art and graphics began to gain prominence. These artists lacked the skills to do art with new technology, and lacked the ambition and any passion which was required to learn something new that would have diversified their artistic talents. They had their tools and they didn't want new ones. Their opposition actually was a result of a fear of being displaced, they wanted to stay in their stagnated comfort zone.

Many web designers today are much the same. You want to make art with your old tools and are not really technologists at all, perhaps with new brushing techniques (JS libraries) in some instances, but never with any major evolutionary change.

This stagnates innovation, even worse you are actively supporting the suppression of choice because you are afraid that you may become obsolete in your complacence with the technology behind your art.