"Are you suggesting that Firefox and Eclipse are lacking in some way because they are built for multiple platforms and would be much better if they were written

"Are you suggesting that Firefox and Eclipse are lacking in some way because they are built for multiple platforms and would be much better if they were written for a single platform..." Firefox and Eclipse would be worlds better if they were written for a single platform. I'd go so far as to suggest that the only gain in writing cross-platform software is that it runs on more than one platform. Everything else suffers -- or at least is limited to a common denominator. "Common" being the operative word.