I think it depends on what the use case for IPFS is. Many use it "server-side" to just transfer and store files, so a "native client" makes a lot of sense. The IPFS devs always recognized the importance of the browser though and as such js-ipfs (https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs) has always been a first-class implementation of IPFS. With js-ipfs, the IPFS protocol works in the browser and can be embedded to JavaScript applications in a way that doesn't "require a new client".

Highly recommend to read into IPFS and how it works to understand the various use cases and possibilities. A good starting point would be https://ipfs.io/ and https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs.