I'm with him on most of this, but I just can't agree that frameworks like Sproutcore or Uki are good fits for all or even most of the the web apps out there. We've spent years showing off the beautiful things you can do with HTML & CSS and most web users have come to expect that.
Sure, the desktop-in-browser approach works in some places, but ignoring standard elements and replacing them with non-semantic, inline-styled <div> elements, and script handlers (e.g. inspect elements on http://ukijs.org/examples/core-examples/controls/) strikes me as cavalier and reminiscent of how SOAP treated HTTP.
The DOM is not something to be coerced and abstracted upon: it is the presentation structure for the largest aggregation of human knowledge ever. It deserves some respect! :-)
Sure, the desktop-in-browser approach works in some places, but ignoring standard elements and replacing them with non-semantic, inline-styled <div> elements, and script handlers (e.g. inspect elements on http://ukijs.org/examples/core-examples/controls/) strikes me as cavalier and reminiscent of how SOAP treated HTTP.
The DOM is not something to be coerced and abstracted upon: it is the presentation structure for the largest aggregation of human knowledge ever. It deserves some respect! :-)