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Tamar (who did her Ph.D. disseration on a User Interface Management System <g>)
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What is a user Interface Management System? And further, how long ago was this?
And further still, how relevant is that work today?

You know the old saying - "It's not the fiddle, it's the fiddler..." Bad UI is bad UI, regardless of what application development platform you use. To say that bad UI is inherent with Web Interfaces is like saying you cannot build data centric applications with Visual Basic or that you cannot build N-Tier C/S apps with Visual FoxPro, or that you could not build encaspsulated/modular routines in FPW since it did not support OO. Of course, none of these assertions have basis in fact...

I can build just as bad a UI in VB/VFP as I can in IE. To classify browser-based interfaces as "bad UI" because they don't support the keyboard in the same manner as a Win32 UI is an extremely flawed argument. I suppose it begs the question 'How many web apps have you written Tamar?' Somewhere between thoery and practice, the rubber has to meet the road. Again, what practical work have you done to reach this conclusion?

I would bet you could achieve a fairly high degree of keyboard support in a browser-based UI. Therefore, isn't the issue with the folks that actually design/build the applications, not the tools themselves?

As somebody who rejects the mouse as a valid device, clings to the use of 10+year old DOS-based software, Is there merit here? IMO, the POV and assertions you make are extremely dated. In fact, they are about as technologically relevant as the typewriter and punchcards.