Everything is node these days; while that may be great for people who like to stick knee-deep in JavaScript, I prefer small and simple solutions.
It's not that I wouldn't have tried. I even created a working browserified bundle.js from svk's steem-rpc library, and now he also added a build in the repo for everyone to use. But I still wasn't happy. I guess I'll never get over my dislike for node.
It took me a couple of days and I had to learn some things I successfully avoided until now. But it was worth the time, I can now talk to steemit with a handy 1kB library. I plan to add transaction signing later this or next week, other features when a need emerges.
If you want to see it live check out the temporary non-interactive GUI for steemdice :)