As I see it html (4 and 5) has reached a dead end. The "language" is atleast is no longer suited for building rich web applications. Is there any standards in the works that will support the increased needs for rich clients?
As I see it, the next markup language for future gui creation has to be alot more matrix oriented. Instead of supplying nifty-easy-to-relate-to-elements like paragraph and table there has to be powerful less abstracted elements that can create these. The table element, for instance, is row by column oriented. Sometimes yo'd rather need a column by row oriented table - but even that would not suffice for a powerful tree. Like tables where you colapse rows or column, update sub tables within tables. Also, applying style to portions of tables is a hassle. Further, its feels lika a fairly inconsistent language, but that is just my view.
Further id like to se a protocol that aint as bloated as the body of http messages. Not that is a HUGE factor but heavy ajax can is hard on the browsers on even modern computers. For responsiveness and utilization of cpu cycles (would be interesting to see the net power utilization for unecessary html parsing done globaly eash day) the actual markup representation should be something closer to the DOM instead of have-to-parse html. Instead of sending the description of the ui model, send the model. Ofcourse this could just be seen as a layer replacement of the http protocol stack. I understand that the readability of html is surely a factor that has driven its popularity, but for some it just aint necessary.
Glad to hear your input.
