The theory of UI libraries is that users can take their knowledge between applications. When you start using a new app, you already know mostly how it will behave, because it shares the UI vocabulary with other apps.
The web has been terribly violent to this idea. Native UIs are expected to support keyboard navigation, keyboard shortcuts, a menu bar, type select, drag and drop, accessibility, scripting... And in any given interaction there are advanced modes: multiple selection, modifier keys, etc.
Hardly any of this works on the web; even if it did you wouldn't think to try it. Does type select works in GMail's custom context menu? Can you command-C copy a message in one folder, and paste it in another? Would it even occur to you to try those things?
That stuff is ancient I know, and it would be one thing if the web were pioneering new UI vocabulary that displaced the old. But it's not. There's nothing new that has taken hold, no replacement for what is lost. Gmail has its janky, app-specific keyboard shortcuts, which is at least something, but there's no mechanism for it to spread.
We're in a Dark Age. Every web page now has its own custom CSS-style menu that only supports the most basic hover-and-click, and the bar for good UI is just lying on the floor.
The web has been terribly violent to this idea. Native UIs are expected to support keyboard navigation, keyboard shortcuts, a menu bar, type select, drag and drop, accessibility, scripting... And in any given interaction there are advanced modes: multiple selection, modifier keys, etc.
Hardly any of this works on the web; even if it did you wouldn't think to try it. Does type select works in GMail's custom context menu? Can you command-C copy a message in one folder, and paste it in another? Would it even occur to you to try those things?
That stuff is ancient I know, and it would be one thing if the web were pioneering new UI vocabulary that displaced the old. But it's not. There's nothing new that has taken hold, no replacement for what is lost. Gmail has its janky, app-specific keyboard shortcuts, which is at least something, but there's no mechanism for it to spread.
We're in a Dark Age. Every web page now has its own custom CSS-style menu that only supports the most basic hover-and-click, and the bar for good UI is just lying on the floor.