I want to be able to deliver a packaged application built using a proper GUI toolkit to users with the simplicity of just linking to a URL. But we've had this a

I want to be able to deliver a packaged application built using a proper GUI toolkit to users with the simplicity of just linking to a URL. But we've had this ability almost forever in the form of "applets"; built with Java, Flash, or even Silverlight. Obviously no one one wants to use these plugin-based platforms anymore for very good reasons (security, performance, and usability). The problem with starting from scratch with something new is that, today, you can deliver a "pretty good" user experience using nothing but HTML and JavaScript. And it already works on pretty much every single computing device available, without needing additional software. Along with you I've been preaching about the disconnect between a "semantic" web document and a stateful GUI app. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript combine to make probaby _the worst_ GUI toolkit in wide use today. You can even blame Microsoft for inventing AJAX[2], laying the foundation for SPAs. But it is getting better. I look ahead to things like Flexbox[0], CSS Grid Layout[1], ECMAScript 6, etc. The platform is maturing, enabling developers to create GUIs that feel even more native. But the packaging and delivery are still "broken". I would love to see something like Chrome Apps[3] become a standard. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexible_boxes https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Flexi... [1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-grid/ http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-grid/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp... [3] https://developer.chrome.com/apps/ https://developer.chrome.com/apps/