"You seem to be expecting these new developers who are just learning HTML to know how to build complex pages using aggregate web service calls via JS, based on a non-standard in-house system."
Sorry I missed hitting on this one. I do not expect a designer to be doing service calls that is the point. You can write a JavaScript controller that grabs reference to any UI components that it needs, you do not write JavaScript in the HTML, the designer is then working in pure HTML CSS. The JavaScript developer is the one orchestrating the work-flow logic in a code-behind manner. Each person has their domain and once a developer feels comfortable they can graduate to the next domain. Just as I don't expect a HTML designer to have to know Java constructs I don't expect a Objective-C developer to know HTML constructs. It's not about constraining people, it's about re-usability of reusable components and isolating non-reusable components.
Sorry I missed hitting on this one. I do not expect a designer to be doing service calls that is the point. You can write a JavaScript controller that grabs reference to any UI components that it needs, you do not write JavaScript in the HTML, the designer is then working in pure HTML CSS. The JavaScript developer is the one orchestrating the work-flow logic in a code-behind manner. Each person has their domain and once a developer feels comfortable they can graduate to the next domain. Just as I don't expect a HTML designer to have to know Java constructs I don't expect a Objective-C developer to know HTML constructs. It's not about constraining people, it's about re-usability of reusable components and isolating non-reusable components.