[dasmoth]

Either that, or personal data has to stored in a central server so it can be accessed on demand by web apps - which would eliminate a lot of web forms, but would have uncomfortable political and social implications.

That doesn't necessarily require centralisation. Web browsers have some form-filling capabilities now, and that data can stay under end-user control. Perhaps there's scope for building on something like this (although the growth of, _e.g._ "social login" doesn't leave me too optimistic. That perhaps does count as an example of UI innovation, although one which hasn't particularly registered with me since I tend to avoid it).

There's still room to improve form-based pages, because there's still far too little research into best practice. But forms are an efficient way to collect information, so it's hard to imagine a secure and private UI paradigm that would eliminate them altogether.

Agreed. I don't see easy wins, but trying to make forms as good as they can be seems a very worthwhile area of endeavour. I suspect part of this might be trying not to go too far in terms of baking "business rule" type stuff into forms, which has a tendency to leave people in impossible states (thinking, for instance, of academic grant systems which can end up with some very strong assumptions about career paths built in)