KDE 4 and GNOME 3 happened in the meantime. Which means there's been a lot of demand but a dearth of supply for a conservative but feature-rich desktop environm

KDE 4 and GNOME 3 happened in the meantime. Which means there's been a lot of demand but a dearth of supply for a conservative but feature-rich desktop environment. Since XFCE was probably the closest to meeting that demand, it's not surprising that it gained a lot of features. Meanwhile, it looks like LXDE is going to fill the niche that XFCE used to fill.