A modern web framework must have:
 1. A simple, persistent and temporary model layer - elephant
 2. A set of flexible, customizable generic renderers
 3. A set of flexible, extensible widgets (do rendering, maintain UI state, etc.)
 4. Good looks out of the box
 5. Architectural guidance (how to create widgets, where to put them, widget interaction, callbacks, etc.)
?6. Support for natural modal coding
?7. Support for maintaining/reloading/versioning UI state

Options:
- A thread per session
- Rebuild widgets (ala ASP.NET), use some sort of monadic/cps code for modal code