and other hippies want to not just make static hypertext, but do shit like animate stuff and blink things. - This occasionally has practical applications: animation to indicate purpose or guide user; reduce request/response latency (responsiveness), etc
is fast enough to do stuff previously done on server - Most importantly, templating & generating HTML - This is good. - Everything that has to do with the end user experience can be built on platform in one place.
finished HTML anymore - Maybe bootstrap tho - PHP handles authentication and security - PHP is the glue between the browser-based app and the data source - Browser is a platform for the end user. One of many.