Think about it like this: In the beginnings of Web 2.0 people used tables for their layouts. The experience was abysmal, but it worked and allowed quite sophisticated layouts, remnants of which you can still find sometimes today. HTML has changed since then, and lots of things have improved, but its roots undeniably lie in marking up text documents, not applications.
I think that mostly shows in the awkwardness of transferring user interface widgets over. Stuff like popover, modals, combo boxes, toggles, drag and drop, sticky elements, etc. have either just recently become possible or require manual efforts to get right. And that, in my opinion, is an effect of shoehorning application primitives into a document environment.
I think that mostly shows in the awkwardness of transferring user interface widgets over. Stuff like popover, modals, combo boxes, toggles, drag and drop, sticky elements, etc. have either just recently become possible or require manual efforts to get right. And that, in my opinion, is an effect of shoehorning application primitives into a document environment.