> Are those days permanently gone? The days when actual UI/UX innovation was a thing?

To an extent, yes. The ecosystem has matured. The things that work have been discovered, the things that don't have been discarded.

I think it'll take another big leap in hardware form factor (Apple Vision being an example of an attempt at it) for us to see meaningful UI changes.

Good, then what’s stopping browsers from shipping these standard controls? It’s ridiculous that everyone needs to invent or depend on large amounts of JS to get anything decent that goes beyond a simple textarea.

Browsers could start by simply improving the controls they do ship with, such has date pickers and selects. They’re all shit. Slightly more complex perhaps would be a combobox. LMAO, we don’t even have comboboxes.

And if you really want to get fancy, rich-text textareas that return standardized, semantic HTML. Also, decent tables with sorting/filtering wouldn’t go amiss.

Standardize some HTMX features into HTML while you’re at it, you’ve got a full-blown revolution.