That may be what you want right now but the article is about something that will last 10 years. And what constitutes a "standard web app" is definitely shifting and will likely solidify over that time. "Fat client" isn't really the best term for it, because the client code is usually pretty lightweight. I'd say "modern web app".
I'd be including a consideration of AngularJS, Backbone, Ember etc. + a service-oriented backend framework like Dropwizard. That's also incidentally how you'd architect your backend support a native mobile client, which is a good thing to prepare for even if you think you only need an HTML frontend right now.
The "cutting-edge" web frameworks that already exist today are the fat client frameworks you describe (client-side rendering). The web frameworks of the future will have robust server-side and client-side rendering, in my opinion. We're already seeing a little bit of this with Airbnb and Rendr for Backbone, React, and Twitter's web app, but it's not quite there.
I'd be including a consideration of AngularJS, Backbone, Ember etc. + a service-oriented backend framework like Dropwizard. That's also incidentally how you'd architect your backend support a native mobile client, which is a good thing to prepare for even if you think you only need an HTML frontend right now.