it seems ridiculous that we have to embed an entire browser, meant for internet web browsing, just to create a cross-platform UI with moderate ease.
Why are native or semi-native UI frameworks lagging so far behind? am I wrong in thinking this? are there easier, declarative frameworks for creating semi-native UIs on desktop that don't look like windows 1998?
I'm not sure what you mean about embedding a browser - do you mean writing your UI in XAML? If so I wrote a whole blog post suitable for beginners and up on how to write a MAUI UI using only C# Creating MAUI UI's in C#