Said another way... >a level of abstraction is still missing in the web developer's toolkit. As CS people we kind of intuitively feel this, but I'm not sure w

Said another way... >a level of abstraction is still missing in the web developer's toolkit. As CS people we kind of intuitively feel this, but I'm not sure we really are missing anything, because, basically, HTML is already at the presentation layer. Remember when the proposed solution was to use XSLT to transform XML into HTML? Terrible as that was, the motivation behind it was a nod to the fact that XML is data and HTML is presentation. So, I also wouldn't agree that mixing chrome and content together in HTML documents was a compensation as much as simply using HTML for its purpose. The content actually starts elsewhere (XML,database, etc.). It ends up in HTML for the very purpose of presentation. There are ways to separate out chrome and modularize it that can use pure HTML. That makes sense. But, I don't think we really need another tech, language, or abstraction. Now, we have added CSS to further abstract and LESS on top if that for still more abstraction. It can go on ad infinitum, but at some point, we are losing value with each additional abstraction.