That entire Wikipedia article looks like it's written by a Unix longbeard who hates anything but the most simple technologies even when there are good reasons to target the inner platform. The articles not only bashes Firefox but also HAL and fails to make mention of any counter arguments.
An file browser inside Firefox may seem nonsensical at first, but if you consider cross-platformness and distribution then it actually makes sense. Writing and distributing a cross-platform desktop app is a complete pain even when using things like wxWidgets and QT. The HAL bashing seems to be based on few facts and only on the biased notion that it's redundant. HAL has brought many usability benefits the past few years. Unlike udev it is not Linux-only. Querying HAL is also a lot easier than querying udev or the favorite /proc or /sys directory of the day. HAL is not being phased out in order to go back to raw udev, it's being phased out in favor of DeviceKit which is like HAL 2.
An file browser inside Firefox may seem nonsensical at first, but if you consider cross-platformness and distribution then it actually makes sense. Writing and distributing a cross-platform desktop app is a complete pain even when using things like wxWidgets and QT. The HAL bashing seems to be based on few facts and only on the biased notion that it's redundant. HAL has brought many usability benefits the past few years. Unlike udev it is not Linux-only. Querying HAL is also a lot easier than querying udev or the favorite /proc or /sys directory of the day. HAL is not being phased out in order to go back to raw udev, it's being phased out in favor of DeviceKit which is like HAL 2.