> let's not forget that operating systems 20 years ago were more "highly interactive, component-based, state-driven, design-system-heavy applications" and still globally (across all applications at once) themeable. So it seems to me that the problem is that modern UI in fact has lost the concept of modular components. e.g. every time someone comes out with light/dark mode as a feature, I can't help but feel like it's an insider joke that's been running so long that the new kids think it's serious

?

It would be possible to have this, by building all apps on the web platform exclusively from native input elements.

For forms. With no fancy things like combo boxes or multi selects!

Window interface, menu bar: using native controls there is ofc a power that web apps don't have.

Regarding the rest, I think you are painting the past with rose-colored glasses.

Yes, UI kits for native applications are more powerful than the web platform in many regards.

But the Windows applications I remember often were a mix of native controls and custom (of course, unthemable) elements.

Many applications even went out of their way to avoid native controls. E.g. SAP, Winamp, and loads of other programs I don't remember now.

Reinventing UI controls is not exclusive to the web platform and "the new kids" have no OS UI framework to build on. They have the web platform.

I too remember the styling options in Windows pre Windows 7.

I loved to play with the ones in Win98.

Most of them would have unpredictable effects on most desktop applications, because of the unpredictable mix of native controls and custom GUI.

If you want to improve web apps, why not argue for better native HTML interactive elements? E.g. menu, multi-select, date-picker...

What I agree with is that handling zoom, font size, color schemes should never be eschewed or ignored.

Oddly enough, in my work history, the Venn diagram of the people who argued for "just make it look like the design, nobody zooms" and the people being smug at web UI was very large. Smug at CSS too, the next moment cheering for obscure and inaccessible, bug-ridden "CSS-only" solutions that the one person who can write CSS proposed as a joke, because a styled toggle switch "shouldn't require JS" (I somewhat agree with this, although the programming language is unimportant).

Rant over... nostalgia is a nice thing.

But web apps are not Windows applications or GTK applications or macOS applications, and these all habe never been as perfect as you make them out.

Sure, large, data-driven applications with good developers for native UI did many things better than many web applications do.

But that's not because web app programmers are too stupid to just do the same thing. That's a tired trope.

Sure, web development has a low barrier to entry. Ranting about it has an even lower one though.