I think, it's time to start to perceive content publishing and application authoring as two distinct disciplines. The problems you describe arise from mixing them freely and without much thought.
I've posted this elsewhere as well, but I don't think they are two separate disciplines. I think that application authors in many cases should be restructuring their apps to fit content publishing paradigms.
The majority of native apps that I use basically boil down to fancy ways to display or edit document-like data. Music players, maps, terminals, text editors, file browsers, etc...
I think these interfaces would all be more elegantly expressed via an HTML-like model; and the insistence of application developers that they need pixel-perfect control over these kinds of interfaces is just a relic of a world when everyone used desktop computers with a single resolution monitor.
There are of course a ton of smart people who disagree with me on that, so take it with a grain of salt.
The majority of native apps that I use basically boil down to fancy ways to display or edit document-like data. Music players, maps, terminals, text editors, file browsers, etc...
I think these interfaces would all be more elegantly expressed via an HTML-like model; and the insistence of application developers that they need pixel-perfect control over these kinds of interfaces is just a relic of a world when everyone used desktop computers with a single resolution monitor.
There are of course a ton of smart people who disagree with me on that, so take it with a grain of salt.