Sorry, i should have clarified — i feel like XUL, at a very early stage in the web's development, helped inform what advanced / platform independent interfaces

Sorry, i should have clarified — i feel like XUL, at a very early stage in the web's development, helped inform what advanced / platform independent interfaces might eventually look like (Facebook JSX -> React -> React Native, svgs, dom parsing, etc). In recent years, particularly through the proliferation of things like JSX, javascript with XML-based extensions seems to be quickly becoming (for better or for worse) the dominant interface rendering paradigm. I agree that XUL was, ultimately, probably the wrong solution due to a number of reasons, but its effects are definitely still somewhat visible in the ecosystem today. What i'm still trying to figure out is how we recapture the freedom and aesthetic creativity that thrived during the early years of the web. We can argue that this was mostly a cultural/demographic shift in users, but I would also argue that, as McLuhan noted, shifting interfaces (particularly through a uniformity of aesthetics) can influence culture.