> I feel this is what I'd like the modern web to be: crisp, clean, high density information, using colors only where it is relevant.
Take a trip only 10 years back. Browse with a Wii, or a series 40 Nokia phone. Or even Lynx using a color terminal. The experience bears considerable resemblance to the one you describe.
Everything pulling the experience away from this is a cultural problem. On the technical side there's the increasing tendency to see the browser as a weird VM/runtime first (or, worse, not to think about the browser much at all, and instead see the web primarily through the lens of several popular technological hammers to which every problem looks like a nail). On the business side there's various legal, economic, and marketing incentives. Not all of these are trivially dismissed concerns, but it's still possible to do what you want in simple enough circumstances or with some careful thinking/work in more complex ones.
Take a trip only 10 years back. Browse with a Wii, or a series 40 Nokia phone. Or even Lynx using a color terminal. The experience bears considerable resemblance to the one you describe.
Everything pulling the experience away from this is a cultural problem. On the technical side there's the increasing tendency to see the browser as a weird VM/runtime first (or, worse, not to think about the browser much at all, and instead see the web primarily through the lens of several popular technological hammers to which every problem looks like a nail). On the business side there's various legal, economic, and marketing incentives. Not all of these are trivially dismissed concerns, but it's still possible to do what you want in simple enough circumstances or with some careful thinking/work in more complex ones.