Yes, making UI’s is not a new problem but building on top of the DOM/HTML as the backbone is.

I too am from the before times where I guess we built essentially our own frameworks to handle own unique issues and take security into our own hands (verses have to trust external libraries and external resources….)

I sadly laugh when I hear 20+ years late people are still fighting back button navigation issues. I still see sites that can’t handle double posts correctly or recovery gracefully when post responses fail/timeout.

I’m out of the game now but for all the benefits of the web it’s been haves to death to support stuff the underlying infrastructure was nit designed for.

Look at WPF (or its more modern incarnations like Avalonia or Uno) for a decent example of what a GUI framework designed for desktop apps from the get go can look like.

Things like these haven't taken over the world because they didn't have the ease of app delivery that browsers provide, and attempts to bolt them onto browsers (Silverlight etc) didn't work out because they didn't work out of the box for most end users.

These days though we have enough bits and pieces directly in the browser (wasm, canvas, WebGL etc) to recreate something like Silverlight that "just works" in any modern browser. Take a look at https://eremex.github.io/controls-demo/ for an example of what's possible.

Yes, my first GUI apps were about 20 years ago in visual basic. It was far easier than laying out webpages (assuming you're targeting desktop users). It's just far harder to get users to download and run something (and should be). But the browser's layout system (the DOM) has 0 to do with that, there is nothing but inertia locking us into that.

Desktop apps have had superior UIs compared to the web for decades, and are still superior today. The Web is a terrible application platform which only persists because it's very easy to distribute to users.