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Firefox Demos Prototype Metro Interface
In order to provide an alternative to IE on Windows 8, Firefox needs a Metro UI. Luckily, development of a Metro interface for Firefox is well underway. The current build reuses the Android interface XUL (by virtue of being based on Fennec). The latest test release features lots of platform integration support: "We have Metro snap working, you can snap another Metro app to the right or left of Firefox and continue browsing.
We also have HTML file input controls tied up to the Metro file picker. ... implemented the Windows 8 search contract, you can use the Search Charm from any screen on Windows 8. If you enter a URL, it will be loaded. If you enter anything else, it will be searched in your default search engine. We also implemented the Windows 8 share contract, you can use the Share Charm from any Firefox page to share that page to another application. Once you select the Share Charm it will list the applications you can share to, for example: Mail, Twitter, or Facebook." If you're interested in following development, the team has made a Mercurial repository available.
Further background is provided by the first and second posts in the series.
Will Metro Firefox share information with desktop Firefox? Currently, Windows 8 has a Metro IE and a desktop IE that don't share cookies or bookmarks. It's pretty hilariously bad.
Well they won't on the ARM edition...
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Nice trolling.
Normal programs will run just fine in Desktop mode on Win8. However, if you want your program to be on the new default dashboard interface (Metro) then it has to be a Metro app. And since both IE and Chrome can appear there, it makes absolute sense that FF should have the feature included as well.
If you want to be a full replacement to IE, you need to be a full replacement to IE, and that means showing up in the system wherever IE can show up. If you actually RTFA, you'll see they're talking about hooking into Win8's built-in browser search and sharing hooks, as well as showing how easy it is to add a Metro interface to FF because of the already existing theming layer within FF.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Because a normal desktop UI doesnt work so hot on a tablet, which in the future are bound to replace a big portion of the desktop market. Hybrids (like the Transformer Prime), with a 2 mode tablet/desktop interface, like Windows 8, could seriously replace lap-tops for everyone except serious developers and graphic designers/3d artists/CAD/etc that need a lot of horse power.
Sticking to desktop-only UI would be suicide for Microsoft. Metro works quite fine if you look at it from a tablet point of view.
You seem to think that the Desktop paradigm will survive the RTM.
It won't.
Have fun with Metro, Windows guys.
--
BMO
It will. Microsoft will not make existing apps incompatible with Windows 8.
Stop spewing lame FUD.
This space for rent.
You're wrong. Windows 8 does allow any browser to become the default, same as before. The catch is that it has only one global (per-user) setting for "default browser" without separation into desktop and Metro. So, if you make some browser default, and that browser does not support Metro, then all URLs in Metro apps will open the desktop app, which is not very convenient - so if someone is heavily using Metro, they will likely only make browser default if it supports Metro.
Regular Metro apps can only be distributed via Windows Store, and, yes, that includes Apple-style app approval model (though it doesn't have some of the more nasty Apple rules, such as "no competing apps" - so other Metro-only browsers are fine).
That said, browsers are special-cased. More specifically, if a desktop application is installed and registers itself as a handler for http: URI schema, and the user selects that application as the default browser, then that app is given the opportunity to also provide a Metro version. Basically, it can provide a tile that appears in Metro home screen, can pin secondary tiles there (for bookmarks, web apps etc), and when launched, can detect if it's being launched from the tile or from an URL in another Metro app, and can decide whether to launch in desktop or Metro mode (e.g. IE10 has that as an option - always desktop / always Metro / same as invoker). This is called a "Metro style enabled Desktop Browser" - this document (.docx) covers the details.
Now, because this is still a desktop app, it is installed by usual means - an MSI or other kind of installer, or even just copy it over (so long as it can register itself to handle http:/// URLs on launch or something). So, it's not subject to Windows Store app approval policy. It's also much less limited with respect to what it can do, compared to a Metro-only app - the sandbox mainly restricts it from doing stuff that only makes sense on the desktop when it's in Metro mode, but otherwise it has same permissions as a desktop app. This means that they can JIT-compile code - kinda important for JS - and share bookmarks and history with desktop.
Desktop version of Firefox is not going away.
As for your question, it's answered right there in TFA:
If a browser is awesome on Metro, the only way to use this awesome browser in Metro is for it to become the default. If a browser is default on Metro, it will also be default on the Desktop.
If a browser does not support Metro, it is seriously at risk of losing the default browser status, and therefore significant market share. A browser without support for Metro, if default, would be taking away a Metro browser completely from the user's computer.
Even if a user spends most of their time in the Desktop interface, having a really good Metro browser may be enough for the user to change their default browser. A browser with great Metro support can gain significant browser market share for this reason.
It is extremely important that we deliver an awesome Firefox experience on Metro, one that is tightly integrated with the platform, fast, and feature rich. Windows is by far the platform with the most users and which has the biggest effect on market share.
Don't they also need to be 'approved' by Microsoft? ( or is this no longer the case?) I was actually half expecting them to do what Apple does and block other browsers. The precedent seems to have been set.
Microsoft has actually been behaving themselves recently. They offered assistance to the Mozilla folks to make sure Firefox would be supported on Windows Vista, they moved Windows Update into the control panel so you no longer need to browse to a web site in IE to update your OS, and Windows 7 gives you the option to remove Internet Explorer (although the rendering engine is still there, since lots of apps rely on it). Each version of IE since IE7 has been less awful, and when they wanted to add an RSS reader (which Firefox already had), they actually flew down to Mozilla headquarters to discuss using Firefox's RSS icon in IE because they figured it would cause less confusion for users if they cooperated. Microsoft refused to participate in WHATWG while HTML5 was being developed, but once W3C officially adopted HTML5, Microsoft got on board.
Does IE still suck? Hell yes, but it sucks a lot less than it used to, and Microsoft is playing by the rules now.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Regular Metro apps can only be distributed via Windows Store
That is horrifying.
Required reading for internet skeptics