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What we need is for HTML to get going as a hypermedia again, to make the hypermedia architecture viable for a larger set of web applications. It's been stalled at anchors and forms (with only GET and POST!) for decades.
I'm trying to show where it could go with htmx:
https://htmx.org
Hypermedia (in particular the uniform interface) is what made the web special and there's no reason it can't be improved along the lines of htmx/unpoly/etc.
We don't need something new. We need to take the original concepts of the web (REST/HATEOAS/Hypermedia) seriously.
> What if I want documents with a slight bit of inactivity?
Then you use Adobe Flash. See, we used to have a decent technology for when you want "a document with a slight bit of interactivity". It worked very well for this exact purpose. More than 10 years later, browsers' native capabilities, that are supposed to be a replacement for what Flash offered, have still not quite caught up. Moreover, Flash defined a clear boundary between the document and the application parts.
Did the particular implementation of Flash player suck? Yes, sure. Could this have been done better? Yes, sure. Is it possible to reimplement a Flash player from scratch within a reasonable timeframe with a small team of developers? Yes, sure, Ruffle[1] is a thing, and it's being actively developed.
I miss Flash.
[1] https://ruffle.rs
The problems with the modern web are hardly technical. We have the technology to make it better.
There is a single major problem: advertising. It is the default monetization path for most of the web, and it has become an unstoppable force of sites that are hostile to the user, siphon as much user data as possible, and use every marketing tactic available to trick the user into clicking on ads or agreeing to being tracked.
It has spawned a multi-billion dollar market of shady data brokers that sell user data to the highest bidder, and built an industry of adtech giants.
It has required passing laws to protect the user, and even those were late, not strict enough, impossible to enforce, and only available in small regions of the world.
It is pervasive and offensive, and this has to change. Progress is very slow on this front, but we need new monetization options that are as easy to use for both the user and content creator, and respect the user and their privacy rights.
Say what you want about Brave Inc., the BAT[1] is the most compelling of such alternatives. It currently uses user-friendly ads, but those can be bypassed by funding the wallet instead.
I'm curious about other alternatives to advertising, not about another web framework.
[1]: https://basicattentiontoken.org/