I agree. I don't doubt that XUL had severe limitations, security issues, and was a nightmare to maintain. But all of those were mostly problems for Mozilla dev

I agree. I don't doubt that XUL had severe limitations, security issues, and was a nightmare to maintain. But all of those were mostly problems for Mozilla developers to deal with. Users didn't experience them, and any security and performance issues could've been addressed without scrapping the entire framework. But Mozilla chose to prioritize developer well-being over the needs of their users, and chase some performance and productivity metrics compared to a novel browser built by a company with enormous amount of resources to throw at it. And years later its old user base is still salty about that decision, watching how Mozilla becomes even more irrelevant, while being in denial and celebrating their current direction. It's a sad state of affairs, and a documentary should be made once Mozilla finally shuts down.