Native vs. abstracted is hardly an effective indicator for analyzing performance. There are many abstractions that improves performance, a prime example being c

Native vs. abstracted is hardly an effective indicator for analyzing performance. There are many abstractions that improves performance, a prime example being caches. Even abstractions that can introduce some overhead can improve performance under certain conditions, like virtual memory. The dichotomy is also too vague a concept to be anywhere useful as a proxy for performance. This very thread is a good example. I don't see how XUL is more "native" than HTML is, but some see otherwise. The only reliable way to reason about performance is to look at what the code is actually doing.