Well, I wish these ambitions that people have for the web -- like providing entrepreneurs and engineers a way to deliver apps without relying on Microsoft or another platform owner and like providing designers and artists a medium for artistic expression -- did not make writing and reading simple text documents a confusing experience that can go wrong in dozens of ways.
And does anyone besides me find it ironic that the term 'thin client' is sometimes applied to this hairball over ever-increasing complexity we call the web browser?
You are right, the web is diverging into pages and applications, unfortunately some are using applications technology to deliver pages. Yet others keep trying to force page development patterns and practices on applications. The progressive enhancements one is the worst of all the sins of page developers writing apps. It kills the model and spikes the complexity.
over ever-increasing complexity we call the web browser?
Much of the complexity at least from a development standpoint is when people try to sprinkle in Ajax. They are two very distinct development patterns and mixing them creates a maintenance monster. If one is providing pages they are better off, grabbing a CMS and delivering pages, if one is building an app then one is better off throwing away JSP, ASP or PHP and writing all of the UI logic in client side JS that communicates to the server via REST and gets data that the UI is then responsible for displaying. Anything in between those two becomes a maintenance monster.
And does anyone besides me find it ironic that the term 'thin client' is sometimes applied to this hairball over ever-increasing complexity we call the web browser?