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I also think that using html tags is a poor practice. That said, Dojo does not require it for anything.

I use dojo daily, and I find everything to be well-written and high quality. It's the documentation that has always been a train wreck. Their idea of improving the documentation is reorganizing it on a new website.

It is modular, you only use the modules you need, and you only load the javascript you need. As for data-*, you only use that if you want, it is a feature provided by another module. If you don't like it then don't use that feature and don't load that module ('dojo/parser'). You can create widgets programatically like in jQuery (and thats what I do).

So to answer the original question:

Does anyone actually think dojo has a future compared to the power that jquery gives to make your own "widgets" but far simpler than dojo?

The answer is: yes, it has a future in a wide range of places. But in the subset of DOM manipulation, it might be more appropriate to use jQuery.