I think it has to do with a kind of counter-purpose development where the people who create the devices are trying to create a good experience on websites and the designers of websites keep moving the goalposts.
Perhaps it's time that web designers are subject (or subject themselves) to a similar set of human interface guidelines that app developers are subject to, for instance.
I would love to replace web pages with an RSS reader type program that just displays content and navigation in a legible format.
But with all the fancy stuff that's being added on and on, it seems like the best we're going to get is browsers with a reading "try to unfuck the formatting" button once you've gotten to the content you want.
In my opinion, all sites should be usable like this. Styles and scripts should merely be enhancements, not requirements.
As much as I agree, many sites are not usable like this :(
And there are aspects of CSS that I do want to keep, like making the navigation lists properly horizontal (and in some cases, nested with hovers). Without CSS, you sometimes have to scroll through several pages of expanded out header/navigation before you find the content.
An unusable webapp frustrates users and drives them off, but an informational page trying to be some kind of 1920's prediction of a futuristic interactive magazine is annoying at most. I can always figure out how to read the text, so I just put up with the stupid design.
I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't split the Internet into two - one for cloud apps and another for content - and design the tech stacks accordingly.
I guess the problem is our attention economy. As a designer your job is to hold attention, and this drives design trends so far from competitors that usability suffers.
Although we do see that people love the uniformity of the big social networks. I find Twitter's clean timeline much more helpful than visiting individual websites.
I wonder if we'll continue to see a trend of the web separated into app-level experiences & information silos. I'm thinking there's a big void in the market for something like squarespace meets tumblr.