[noduerme]

Such a great point. HTML is a terrific way to write documents and TERRIBLE way to lay out applications - especially for lots of different screen sizes. It's not surprising at all to see Google embracing Canvas now to underpin Docs; basically they are admitting that it would have been better to write the whole program in a Java VM or in Flash than to rely on the browser for layout. This is patently obvious to anyone who builds large web applications. Ten years ago we had ASWing, JSwing and plenty of other actual frameworks where you didn't have to diddle around with tons of logic embedded in templates which were embedded in other logic; but thanks to Apple we're still saddled with this wretched Javascript/HTML paradigm that was never meant to do much more than inline some animated GIFs back in the 90s. Yes, it's gotten better (I've been doing this since the 90s, so I know). But it's so inelegant. To some degree this is just a problem with open web standards. It would be better if any one company actually had dominated to the point where they could write a closed standard, because at least it would be coherent and cross-platform. It was a lot easier to write a web app in 2010 than it is now, and it pains me to think how many hours I could have avoided reinventing the wheel if Flash had been allowed to stick around. Any app written entirely now on canvas is just replicating a VM that already existed a decade ago in what was by then a much more mature ecosystem - and was faster then than canvas or WebGL is now.

If I had to pick a stack to do a new web app entirely in canvas, I'd probably choose to port a ton of interface components from AS3 into PixiJS... but the point is, where have we gotten? Ten years from now we'll be writing apps the way they were written in 2010 -- inside a black box in a canvas or VM. The HTML5/JS revolution has been a sham from the start, just a way for one corporation to dismantle another with the side benefit of forcing all of us to rewrite our code from scratch in a crappier language.