The core issue is that the web was intended as a document delivery platform, not an application delivery platform. That mismatch means one of two things: you ei

The core issue is that the web was intended as a document delivery platform, not an application delivery platform. That mismatch means one of two things: you either have to pervert your application to expose a document-centric UX, or you pervert the document platform to look like an application platform. I would say in 95%+ of cases, perverting your application is the better choice: my core issues with the web now are surprising/malign UX patterns and terrible performance, not cross compatibility or lack of features offered by browser APIs. That doesn't mean you should forgo JavaScript entirely, but the construction of the UI and UI interactivity should not be its primary responsibility.