[xp84]

I think most of us here who aren't self-important "UX designers" (or branding consultants) would agree with you, but the decision makers responsible for most of the sites on the Web disagree/don't care what we'd like. They want their site to look identical on all platforms and browsers, and to have their "signature" design language, to heck with what users might expect. It's why you see stupid things like pixel-perfect clones of the iOS "switch" control brought to the Web.

So, anyway, if the `<dialog>` is ever to have a chance at adoption, instead of the "div soup and 1000 lines of JS and CSS modal" we've had everywhere since 2008 or so, it really should be blank slate for the "UX Designer" who fancies themself a real artist can vomit their personal brand of "elegant but bold, minimalist, flat design" onto the DOM.

If it's not completely skinnable, they'll just keep insisting on building div soup modals forever.

[mardifoufs]

Idk, personally I completely disagree. I don't want to theme every single app. I want them to be distinctive and I don't actually care about native look. What I care about is that they have a nice design (which is as subjective as it gets, I know) but more importantly that they are distinctive enough in terms of design. Now I don't want every app to have different shortcuts or whatever, but I don't want slack to look like discord for example. And I don't want to theme anything ideally.