Platform independent GUI

[wysota]

About CSS I'm saying that it bypasses the native uglyness of the HTML to make it look appealing and in "some" cases user friendly.

CSS is part of HTML since like.... 9 years and 11 months now?

First, that Redmond company you're talking about is 90% of the market,

Which means they don't do mistakes or that they don't learn on their mistakes? Because I don't see your point...

Second, I'm not sure I know what's best for users, but I'm sure they don't know what's best for them.

That's why you provide defaults and let them modify the configuration. If you provide a 10 or 12pt font as the only choice for your application, you immediately stop many people with disabilities or big screens from using your app. Imagine what would happen if you couldn't have changed the default font in Windows, because some programmer in Redmond thought "he knew better". That's also why in most schools in Poland (and I assume not only here) in "Computer Science" class children are taught how to use Notepad and Word, because someone "up there" knows what's best for them (hey, why learn something useful, let's learn how to underline a sentence in Word!). That's the same reason why there is a single application (Windows only) available in Poland which is an obligatory way of sending data to the tax office for even small companies - because someone knew better. You would probably find similarities in your country if you looked for them.