I agree. While fluff is extremely important it is just as important to keep it separate from the crunch. I've always preferred books with separate sections. It's sooo much easier to look up stuff when it's concentrated in a rules appendix.
The 4E PHB and MM are really just reference book - all rules, almost no fluff. That's going to be a big advantage when the books are used during play.
The 4E DMG is a bit different. Some chapters concentrate on advice, some contain rules and some have a mix of both. At least most of the crunchy bits are concentrated in the toolbox chapter.
Nonetheless, 4E is lacking in the fluff department so far. If they'll release ecology articles for all the races, that'll be one big step in the right direction. Actually, I prefer the DDI articles to be light on crunch.
E.g. I didn't care much about the 'Bazaar of the Bizarre'. It's unlikely I'm ever going to use any of these items in the game just like I never used any of the magic items appearing in any of the 3E splat books - except the Magic Item Compendium.
When I'm writing an adventure and try to decide which treasure to place in it, I'll never start flipping through all of the supplements and scanning all of the online articles. I'll only ever look at a compilation of magic items.
Now, if the items from DDI articles were put into an item database along with all of the items from print products, they would actually be useful. It's also something WotC initially promised. But unfortunately they seem to have dropped the idea.
Ah, well, I'm starting to ramble, better stop now.
You need to take a look at the Compendium. It is now up and running, and they have hundreds of magic items in there. O_O (But then they put every gradient of "+" item in there, so that's fluffing it up a bit.)
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