[notblahbl4hblah]

I think that the main reason that people keep wanting to do this is that web developers would like to work on this problem but don't have skills that are applicable immediately. It's going to require a great deal of learning on most of their parts that is at least as daunting as becoming a good front-end developer to use existing crypto libraries well...much less engineer new cryptosystems. That would be the difference between being able to code and being able to write a high quality optimizing compiler, for instance. With study and hard work you can use the fruits of the crypto community well...but you have to start by realizing where you are starting from. In browser javascript isn't just another programming language and runtime that's completely akin to c and the c runtime. The Matasano article does a great job of describing why.