Exactly, at the end of the day, all of these web frameworks’ only job is to ultimately generate HTML and Javascript.
I have switched to using Apache Wicket for web development. It’s great! No more embedded scriptlets, or tons of XML configuration. Just plain HTML and Java backing classes. I can use any HTML editor to design the look and feel with CSS.
That is not 100% correct. Some of the newer frameworks such as Silverlight do not use HTML or JavaScript except as a launching point. They run through their own plug-in/shell.