The "no" part comes from people trying to twist a system designed for displaying static text into an application platform. The original web memo by Tim Berners

The "no" part comes from people trying to twist a system designed for displaying static text into an application platform. The original web memo by Tim Berners-Lee defined "a document" as text only content that could be displayed on a 240x80 character display. Images were defined as an optional extra few people would be able to access. I'm going to guess you want a web that does a bit more than that. In which case.. Tim Berners-Lee's memo suggests "Live Links". His proposal was that the web should have "documents" that are generated per request aka serverside rendering. He went further and suggested "If one sacrifices portability, it is possible so make following a link fire up a special application, so that diagnostic programs, for example, could be linked directly into the maintenance guide." To me that sounds a lot like a clientside app. At the time (1989) I imagine he meant that a link in a page would execute a local app, but it turns out we just found a different (better?) approach. The memo is really interesting - https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html - TBL was incredibly insightful.