I think it's pretty clear we need to separate the "document" aspects of the web from everything else. HTML and CSS are really useful technologies for dealing wi

I think it's pretty clear we need to separate the "document" aspects of the web from everything else. HTML and CSS are really useful technologies for dealing with text content, but they're only one tiny part of what the web is about now. Conceptually, building web apps with HTML and CSS just does not make sense, and almost necessitates using some clunky framework built on top of JS. (And I'm not JUST talking about Facebook and the like. I think most websites with a nav bar count as "web apps", in a sense.) Perhaps this will involve building the layout and plumbing of a website using straight (sandboxed) code, and then filling in the content using the same old HTML (or Markdown) and CSS. If the site has no content — if it's an online tool like a file converter or an uploader, for example — you could omit the HTML/CSS part altogether. Think UIKit: build up your view controllers, your tables, your data sources, and your nibs, and then provide the content in the form of HTML/CSS like before. (Of course, you don't have to work like this if you don't want to. Just throw up a blank view and keep working in HTML/CSS/JS if you prefer.) (Yes, you can create a blank page and populate it with JS today — and indeed, this is what frameworks like Ember do — but you'd still using divs and the like to do it. I think this is backwards. We shouldn't be using a text rendering engine to produce web apps; we should be using web apps to host text rendering views. In other words, Ember should exist on the top level, not the bottom.) One question that will let us know if we're on the right path is, "Can we make websites that feel just as good as native apps on mobile?" Not just "good enough", but so good that nobody will even think to write native web apps ever again. Same responsiveness; same support for gestures and touches; no more misclicks and accidental navigation. Fundamentally, the web is for content, so it'll always be vital to be able to do things like hyperlink to arbitrary pages and open multiple links in succession. But now that most of the web's content is inside these overarching web apps, and also that websites are being used for purposes other than content, it's important that the tools we use grow along with the web.