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.
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.