I want the web to provide access to a wide variety of information. I would much prefer the option to consume that as I choose, not to have everything gift-wrapped by force. An awful lot of design is a distraction from the content it is supposed to present.
Look, you wouldn't like it if every different document you opened or site you looked at took it upon itself to restyle your desktop and rearrange all your Photoshop preferences to suit the author, would you? Likewise, you don't think that Wikipedia would be improved by allowing every editor to restyle pages in Myspace or Geocities fashion, do you? Of course not, once you've configured or become familiar with a particular environment, consistency supports productivity.
Some of us want to navigate the web for content, without all the branding and UI inconsistencies. I read a variety of specialist web forums, for example, not unlike HN except that they're mostly running PHPbb or something along those lines. They all look different, with different layouts and so on, many of which are UI catastrophes. I would love to just download the semantic information and have a nice consistent UI of my choice that ran on the client side instead of consuming far more bandwidth than the content I am there to read.
When you hit somebody else's server, use their bandwidth and download their stuff I'd say its only fair that they at least get total control over how it displays and behaves by default in a browser. You're totally free to not hit that server if the presentation of the content offends you, or alternatively use a RSS reader or similar.
I'm not arguing against a semantic web, but I will argue in favour of people being able to present and serve their content in any way they see fit. One page JS web app? Fine. 100% Flash microsite? Fine. Crazy Chrome only WebGL/NativeClient art experiment? Fine. Streamlined standards compliant site conveying great semantic value? Also fine. We need all of these. People can vote with their feet and we achieve progress. Like humanity the beauty of the web is the freedom and variety it offers.
Look, you wouldn't like it if every different document you opened or site you looked at took it upon itself to restyle your desktop and rearrange all your Photoshop preferences to suit the author, would you? Likewise, you don't think that Wikipedia would be improved by allowing every editor to restyle pages in Myspace or Geocities fashion, do you? Of course not, once you've configured or become familiar with a particular environment, consistency supports productivity.
Some of us want to navigate the web for content, without all the branding and UI inconsistencies. I read a variety of specialist web forums, for example, not unlike HN except that they're mostly running PHPbb or something along those lines. They all look different, with different layouts and so on, many of which are UI catastrophes. I would love to just download the semantic information and have a nice consistent UI of my choice that ran on the client side instead of consuming far more bandwidth than the content I am there to read.