@JaggedSac

Your opinion on HTML is irrelevant and beside the point.
99% of the internet is made of hypertextual, stylized content, not of "rich applications". Thus most of the work of a browser is to implement the standard for hypertextual content that web developers can code to.

That isn't where the future is headed.  We are constantly trying to force HTML to do things it was not meant to do.  Heavy use of Javascript to manipulate DOM objects is terrible.  You might not see it, but HTML is god awfu.  Hell, the site you are on right now makes heavy usage of Javascript, manipulating the archaic HTML to do its bidding.

Because they make money, and that's evil

been already accused of been and MS hater but wen we have servers that should run smooth and problem free... and that dont happen and takes lots of time resolving these problems that souldnt happen is a pain in the ass... i have 24/7 running computers that nobody have access and if i dont check them up once a week they just stop working due to security flaws of windows... that put grey hair in my head... so i have the right to dislike MS...

@JaaggedSac

Uh? The future is headed towards making a "rich application" out of every web site?
Since when?

Of course HTML was not meant to "do" anything. It's only a markup language. The DOM on the other hand was born exactly to be accessed and manipulated. The fact that _any_ markup language can be parsed into a DOM is a general property.

HTML(+CSS) only deals with the layout of the _content_ that goes on your screen. It's the equivalent of the GDI libraries. And if something besides text, links, images are needed?
We could use a first class canvas tag and an XML-based vector graphics system, you know, like SVG that is supported by Firefox and WebKit browsers, but not by IE.
We might like to embed videos with a single tag instead of needing a whole Flash or Silverlight application. You know what "archaic" markup language has a tag? HTML 5. And guess which mainstream browsers support it yet - at least in their development branches - and committed to fully support it when the specs are final, and which one doesn't?

And I know how HTML and JS work, I've coded web applications since 2002.

Besides, you know what: with WPF ( codename Avalon ) it's Windows "rich applications" that are moving towards a declarative markup language based on a dynamic box-model layout, styled in a cascading manner, manipulated in a DOM fashion. You basically got it all backwards.

I did not say markup languages were bad. Just that HTML is. With WPF I can access the code behind the tag since they are written against the .Net framework. If I do not care for the way a tag behaves, I can extend it and provide my own functionality or mute default functionality. The same can be said for Flex(using ActionScript) or Silverlight(a subset of WPF).

With HTML, the tags behave one way, and if you do not like it, you must bludgeon it with Javascript to produce functionality that you would like.

^With HTML the tags don't actually "behave" at all, save for the elementary operation of http POST. They only _describe_, that's why it's declarative.
The way they are rendered is actually in the CSS specs, and being a cascading mechanism means that you can combine all available effects in classes and subclasses or even with qualifiers that have no equivalent in OOP but are much more useful when describing a document.
If only IE actually honoured things like first-child...

Please provide an example of using JS to "produce functionality" of a tag, because I think you're confusing content, presentation and actions ( you know, the model-view-controller separation)

And Bill Gates has done so much charity work it's ridiculous.

I know, most rich people throw a few coppers down, at the very least. Ted Turner is famous for donating a billion dollars to charity.

All of this pales in comparison to what Gates has done already. He has donated tens of billions of dollars, built a giant, incredibly powerful charity dedicated to education, and is continuing to donate. He could have done 1/10th as much as he already has done and people would have said he's "giving back." He didn't stop then, and he continues to give so much money to worthy causes it's absolutely stunning.

Well, that is somewhat my point.  WPF, Flex, and Silverlight (maybe JavaFX but I haven't worked with that yet) all provide an infinite amount of flexibility while also allowing for the use of the simple markup on the front end.  It is a perfect marriage of developer and designers.  Perhaps we are looking at this from different points of view.  I love the new RIA style because I am a programmer, and it enables me to make prettier stuff, much, much easier.  It allows me to come out of my backend systems cave a little more easily.

I find Mr Gates a likeable person in his goofy, nerdy way. And he's been personally generous. But should this make me like the enterprise of which he was CEO?

I think, for example, that many countries would save a lot of money if their public administration were not locked in with the endless treadmill of updating MS products, and could rely on free software to have tools on which they have total control. This would mean keeping money in the country by developing and adapting free tools through local developers. It would also mean not being forced to upgrade or die of a thousand small bugs.

Should I like MS because Mr Gates donates a lot of money to brazilian schools, when at the same time his company is taxing the very same brazilian school system?