I do think a project website is a great complement to an academic paper for collecting all relevant information into one place (author info, supplementary material, citation information). I know most Computer Graphics authors have web pages for their papers that include the paper, accompanying video, reference information and very occasionally a demo. I don't think it is a good replacement for academic papers however.
Academic papers are intended to be static, finalized content so I don't see the need for anything more than hyperlinks, and even hyperlinks are problematic because the content they link to disappears so often. Because of this PDF makes a great export format because it is nearly as old as HTML, standardized and you know your paper will always look the same. And for generating academic paper PDFs there is nothing that produces better looking papers than LaTeX.
As for standardization, TeX is older (1978), more standard (a single definitive reference implementation), and more stable (no feature changes since 1989). LaTeX is not quite as stable (last release was in 1994 with a new version planned for some time in the future) but I would argue it is still more stable than HTML.
Comments
I do think a project website is a great complement to an academic paper for collecting all relevant information into one place (author info, supplementary material, citation information). I know most Computer Graphics authors have web pages for their papers that include the paper, accompanying video, reference information and very occasionally a demo. I don't think it is a good replacement for academic papers however.
Academic papers are intended to be static, finalized content so I don't see the need for anything more than hyperlinks, and even hyperlinks are problematic because the content they link to disappears so often. Because of this PDF makes a great export format because it is nearly as old as HTML, standardized and you know your paper will always look the same. And for generating academic paper PDFs there is nothing that produces better looking papers than LaTeX.
As for standardization, TeX is older (1978), more standard (a single definitive reference implementation), and more stable (no feature changes since 1989). LaTeX is not quite as stable (last release was in 1994 with a new version planned for some time in the future) but I would argue it is still more stable than HTML.