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Web apps have been around for well over a decade but some people are still struggling with the idea that a web browser can display hypertext documents and also

• deckard1 5y ago
  Web 2.0 enabling web apps was always a myth. There have been web "apps" since the 1990s with CGI. XMLHttpRequest merely allowed for the moving of some of that logic to the client side. In that respect, we've been working around the "page" paradigm since the web was practically born. It was a flawed analogy because, even back then, screen sizes and display tech varied among users. Designers still approach web design as if they are designing for print. I've always maintained that if the web were based on a vector technology (think PostScript, but obviously not PostScript) we would be in a much better place both design-wise and accessibility-wise. Content would flow in a much more controlled manner with much less room for browser interpretation and second-guessing. But people were still clinging on to the write once run anywhere (ahem, Java) naivety of the day. And likewise they really thought that you could divorce presentation from semantics and... have something that just worked? I guess? Just sprinkle on some afterthought CSS tech crap and no one will ever notice that the entire thing is flawed at a fundamental level.