Those who do not learn the lessons from XML are doomed to repeat XML.
The DOM is simply an in-memory representation of an XML structure, and any attempts to populate a DOM with JSON (or YAML or ProtoBuffers or...) will simply re-create XML. CSS is a language for writing XML transformations (i.e. XSLT).
Of course, we already have JSON versions of schemas, transformations, xpath, namespaces, and incompatible decoders, so perhaps it is already too late for JSON.
Honestly, we could have a cleaner XML. There's plenty of cruft there, the language could be easier to parse and navigate. We could also have a cleaner XSLT while keeping it's completeness.
We could have a better DOM too. It could be more semantic, and more modular. The good thing is that on this one we are moving in the right direction.
CSS would gain by becoming Turing complete. It also could be aware of runtime values.
But yes, JSON, YAML, and ProtoBuffers are all worsened versions of it. The good news is that we abandoned SOAP, but at the cost of abandoning service directories too.
Those who do not learn the lessons from XML are doomed to repeat XML.
The DOM is simply an in-memory representation of an XML structure, and any attempts to populate a DOM with JSON (or YAML or ProtoBuffers or...) will simply re-create XML. CSS is a language for writing XML transformations (i.e. XSLT).
Of course, we already have JSON versions of schemas, transformations, xpath, namespaces, and incompatible decoders, so perhaps it is already too late for JSON.