[da_chicken]

I think that's part of it. I also think that, as far as interactive components, virtually nothing on the web has had a shelf life of longer than 3-5 years. Ever.

The lone exception are the base HTML components. I think the last actual change to those was making textarea resizable, and that's kind of a browser override to the spec as much as anything else. Essentially nothing has actually changed in form and UI elements.

That tells me:

1. The web is too obsessed with novelty to ever settle on one thing on their own.

2. The best group to actually establish such a thing is likely W3C, which means it will take 15 years and we'll have thrown two away as poorly considered before it's said and done. And it won't matter unless the changes would eliminate something as obnoxious as Flash.

That is still entirely possible. The web works very well, but it's still a combination of HTML, CSS and Javascript. The one word I can think of that describes the state of the overall design is "asinine".