I'm not so sure that the evolution of HTML could or should have been different. The second thing I ever did with images and text was link them to other pages and arrange them in the form of a menu. When I learned to use CGI, the first or second thing I did was write a script to generate pretty menus.
The web's UI is a document-as-app model... documents that use a small set of interactive elements to create a cohesive and useful experience. It beat many competitors that were applications for displaying documents. Document as app works really well. Users understand it. It costs less to develop than old UI guidelines defined desktop apps. And is portable to users on diverse systems... Web apps (and web pages) have succeeded where entire generations of cross-platform tech has failed... or succeeded mildly.
The web's UI is a document-as-app model... documents that use a small set of interactive elements to create a cohesive and useful experience. It beat many competitors that were applications for displaying documents. Document as app works really well. Users understand it. It costs less to develop than old UI guidelines defined desktop apps. And is portable to users on diverse systems... Web apps (and web pages) have succeeded where entire generations of cross-platform tech has failed... or succeeded mildly.