[tannhaeuser]

> The rules are clearly molded around static, primarily text-based documents defined upfront

I mean yeah, that‘s what the web was created for after all. There was no need to invent yet another operating system and desktop environment to replace the ones already existing. The advertising industry capturing the web and brainwashing one generation after another of „web developers“ locking in with said web developers seeing the web primarily as an economical niche to carve out and a means for job safety, is what happened. The end result is that the majority of actually interesting information you want to read is on archive.org nowadays, and on „platforms“ when easy self-publishing was the entire point of it.

Yes HTML is stuck being a markup language for casual academic publishing. Starting in 1997, people wanted to add entire new vocabularies, but W3C botched it by focussing too much on „meta“ stuff, subsetting XML from SGML but then not using it for actual emergent text formats apart from SVG and MathML such as blogs, drama, novels, wikis, etc. Instead they diverted into unproven XForms and SemWeb, leaving HTML in an organizational lock for ten years during the forming years such that everything else (CSS, JS) had to bend around HTML inflexibility, finally having the gall to call that failure a virtue (the structure-vs-presentation dichotomy, „semantic“ HTML, tunneling JSON through HTML, etc.).

[kaoD]

> There was no need to invent yet another operating system and desktop environment to replace the ones already existing.

Actually there was. My web apps can be used in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, Meta Horizon OS, etc. thanks to it being a standard that is more or less not controlled or gatekept by a single entity (browser monoculture aside). Java applets died because of it.

You could argue that it wasn't wise to shoehorn interactive functionality in what was essentially a document presentation format, but that's another story. Having documents and applications intertwined is often cited as a drawback, but I disagree with that since we often want to have app-like behavior for parts of documents, or document-like behavior for parts of apps. Think e.g. interactive programming tutorials with executable REPLs and code examples... we have the ability to create books that are alive, and that's simply amazing.

Thing is, the Web platform is what won, and for good reasons. GTK, Java Swing, and other supposedly multiplatform toolkits did not lose just because -- they lost because the Web is objectively better.

HTTP is awesome. HTML is awesome. CSS is awesome. JS is awesome. JSON is awesome. WAI-ARIA is awesome. The whole web stack is awesome.

I feel that all the negative sentiment around it is just because we cannot fathom how much worse it could have been had the HTML5 effort never happened.

[ktosobcy]

> Actually there was. My web apps can be used in Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, Meta Horizon OS, etc. thanks to it being a standard that is more or less not controlled or gatekept by a single entity (browser monoculture aside). Java applets died because of it. > > Thing is, the Web platform is what won, and for good reasons. GTK, Java Swing, and other supposedly multiplatform toolkits did not lose just because -- they lost because the Web is objectively better.

To be honest I consider Java Swing better than current "fancy web UI". At least it's more consistent and at least try to match the OS... I loath the "creative bunch" that tries to re-invent the wheel and be all flashy and whatnot.

Every app should try to match to the best possible way native OS. Yes, it's not possible 100% of the way but it would go a long way.

Currently we live in a world led by brainded bunch of "let's care about brand" and try to have same UI on all platforms as if users were switching constantly between windows/mac/linux or between iphone/android... no, they don't. At least in the mobile space they do try to be more native-looking and follow the theme but it's not all that great either.

Also. Java/Swing loose (especially on the desktop) because it was slow at the time and wasn't open like "web". Besides learning curve for the web was easier (hey, you can open web console, write `alert('bam!')` and it DOES stuff, wild!... and then it went downhill from there...