It (or maybe a new version of it) is the future. But people got bored and justiably frustrated in how clunky it is, because it can be and do everything. As ofte

It (or maybe a new version of it) is the future. But people got bored and justiably frustrated in how clunky it is, because it can be and do everything. As often happens, people started abandoning it just as it was getting really interesting - w3c xlink, the hypertext/data document of our dreams, and we're not talking about some neato mostly-great thing someone came up in popular language, rather a set of precise standards with implementations in every language. But in its era, the current "get er done/yagni" startup culture was really kicking in as people realized it was a hassle and less immediately rewarding to think of the web as a standards based platform past using the browser as a client.