I suspect this is becoming a bit fruitless because it seems like your tack is - "I can't imagine anything other than the way I want to use the web" But let me

I suspect this is becoming a bit fruitless because it seems like your tack is - "I can't imagine anything other than the way I want to use the web" But let me just mention one other view: The browser, despite the inconsistencies between different brands, is very accessible. Anyone with the ability to peck away at a keyboard and read some basic instructions can make a web page - and with only a little more effort add some quite rich functionality even if only by cutting and pasting some javascript. Now imagine if instead you needed a compiler and an SDK (see footnote), if you couldn't just shove a bit of code in the page but instead it needed to be compiled and included separately. Would the web be what it is today? Look at Java and Flash - why aren't they the dominant forces on the web because they are taking very much the approach you advocate. footnote: and who would make these? Would you have one for every browser, for every language. Who would maintain them? In fact the more thought I give to it the more impressed I am that there is anything like one single common language available in all browsers