Yup, the web is a thoroughly mediocre application platform†, but the world’s best application distribution platform.
†I know this claim will rub some people the wrong way, but if you compare the capabilities of web tooling to build rich application UIs against desktop app tooling of even 20-30 years ago, there’s no comparison. The web is still primitive, and while JS and CSS are improving at a good pace, HTML is almost frozen in carbonite.
Not really - there are pretty big escape hatches - you can do pretty much anything in canvas, custom elements allows you to define your own elements with their own behaviour.
I'd say the problem is the opposite - one of the reasons desktop apps from 20-30 years ago ( say MacOS 7 ) where great from a user perspective is pretty much all apps looked and worked in the same way, using the same UI toolkit and the same UI principals. And from a developer perspective - a lot of the key decisions had already been made for you.
The web of today is a zoo of UI styles and interaction modes.
The problem isn't so much a lack of innovation or possibilities, but perhaps rather the opposite.
It's both, really. HTML makes it really easy to do "corporate branded" fancy buttons, but you still have to jump through hoops to do something that could be done with a database and the stock data grid widget in <10 lines of code in VB or Delphi.
You also might not need any access control, network traffic security, cross platform deployment, instant install, evergreen updating, trivial UI integration ( links ) etc etc.
If you really want something simple you could use Excel, Access or Filemaker as a front end.
I agree life has got more complex - and in some cases unnecessarily so - case in point it's becoming increasingly hard to write web apps without SSL - even if you don't need it.
†I know this claim will rub some people the wrong way, but if you compare the capabilities of web tooling to build rich application UIs against desktop app tooling of even 20-30 years ago, there’s no comparison. The web is still primitive, and while JS and CSS are improving at a good pace, HTML is almost frozen in carbonite.