Why is HTML so complicated?
j-g-faustus: HTML is not complicated at all, that's why it became a success - pretty much anyone could learn to write a basic web page in a few weeks.Web pages became complex over the years as people wanted do things that HTML was never meant to do. Like page layouts: Early on, people would use invisible images for spacing, humongous nested tables to "hack" a page layout in a language that didn't support page layouts, and pictures of text rather than actual text for example for non-standard fonts or text shadows.The primary problem is that HTML was never designed for the kinds of things we use the web for today. See the Crockford Javascript presentation for a history of HTML and Javascript, I recommend Episode IV: http://yuiblog.com/crockford/Designing an "HTML killer" is no simple task, all attempts so far have failed - from Java applets to XML.But even today you can use applets or Flash to embed more complicated programs. The web protocols turned out to be eminently hackable, and with server-side page generation, forms, CSS, Javascript and now canvas it is "good enough" for more and more tasks, so I expect it is safe to say that HTML will be with us for quite a while longer.