HTML is a structured document format, with CSS for styling and presentation. The web became so popular that developers want HTML to be an unstructured data for

HTML is a structured document format, with CSS for styling and presentation. The web became so popular that developers want HTML to be an unstructured data format with a separate fully-fledged layout language.[1] Neither idea is wrong, there's just an impedance mismatch between the two. There are three options: 1. The status quo. Developers mangle technologies designed for something different so it does what they want, with an increasing use of libraries and abstractions. It's inefficient and messy, but it works and is backwards compatible. 2. Give up on the idea of structured data and try to mangle HTML/CSS to be closer to what developers want. You end up with a crap structured document language and a crap web application language, but the web application language will be slightly less crap than the status quo. 3. Create a new language actually designed for web applications with a proper layout engine and HIGs to go with it. Despite being the most sensible option, this isn't realistically going to happen. A lack of backwards compatibility kills adoption and browser makers will never agree. It took them a decade to agree on a font format. None of the options are ideal. I suspect somewhere between 1 and 2 will happen in reality. [1] Layout is also a really hard problem. I don't think it's been acceptably solved in the general case.