Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Scraps Firefox For Windows 8, Citing Low Adoption of Metro
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla today announced it is abandoning the Metro version of its Firefox browser, before the first release for Windows 8 even sees the light of day. Firefox Vice President Johnathan Nightingale ordered the company's engineering leads and release managers to halt development earlier this week, saying that shipping a 1.0 version "would be a mistake." Mozilla says it simply does not have the resources nor the scale of its competitors, and it has to pick its battles. The Metro platform (which has since been renamed to Modern UI, but many prefer the older name) simply doesn't help the organization achieve its mission as well as other platforms Firefox is available for: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android."
Good, lets not waste time and resources metroifying things that need not be, at least not until we get some clarity from microsoft on what they're going to do to fix the mess from windows 8. They could keep the metro language and so on, but they might be better to wipe some of that slate clean for windows 9 and apologize for fucking up so badly. And how they try and fix it could beak anything people would be working on now.
Even use Modern UI apps on the desktop... Why limit yourself to a single open application... (or more if you split the modern UI screen, but that's more hassle than it's worth)
It's just the app for w8 and frankly since many people use the windows 7 hidden under 8, and not w8 proper apps,where normal FF would work, it sounds like a reasonable decision.
I think the renaming of Metro to Modern UI has to do with the trademark rights of Metro AG in the E.U. Microsoft is not allowed to call the GUI Metro in Europe, thus the need for a new name.
Hopefully this is one of those times.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Without Start8 and ModernMix or Classic Shell or whatever , Windows 8.x is not useable.
I gladly have for the first time ever used a pay-for program to fix how bad default Windows shell is. I was annoyed classic start was gone from windows 7 but I got used to it.
Windows 8 is a special kind of strange. Microsoft should learn to SKIN to whatever the old version looked like to keep people from having to retrain. The metro apps stink without modern mix.
Microsoft's new CEO should put a stop to this loser behavior. under the hood, the OS isnt half bad.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I've bought a few laptops recently but they've all been older models with Windows 7. I wouldn't buy a laptop with Windows 8. Used it in the store. The Metro interface sucks. Why do I want to waste time learning something that sucks when Win 7 worked fine.
My employer has ditched Windows versions of our software and we're now all tablet. Developers warned Microsoft this would happen and they arrogantly ignored us.
Everyone makes mistakes, but only an idiot refuses to admits it and keeps their jalopy pointed at the cliff edge while flipping the bird to horrified onlookers.
I assume it still runs on the Win8 desktop UI? Or are Win8 users unable to use Firefox outside a VM?
Those so thoroughly enamoured of Microsoft, that they endure Windows 8 as if it were not a non-functional eyesore? They'd also likely not venture far enough off the farm to Firefox - instead of scalding their retinas with IE.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Is it really that hard to slap a Metro interface on Firefox? And if so, does that tell us about Metro, or Firefox?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's that it's too different. It's a well argued fact that the 2 major mobile OSes are very similar programatticaly to their desktop brethren. In fact, the only visual different between iOS/Android and Mac/Windows is the lack of a multi-window interface. Almost every widget could be seen on both desktops and touch screens in some shape or form, and as such, coding a browser such as Firefox for any of them platforms is much the same regardless of platform. The problem with Metro is it's just too different. It's very hard to convert an interface written for, say, win32 to the new Metro interface simply because there's not many similarities. And herein lies the issues. If developers can't easily code for your API, they won't, and hence Mozilla's stance.
It's a dead platform anyway. I wonder if in 5 years we'll remember it as fondly as we currently remember Vista.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Perhaps Mozilla knows that the Metro Start screen and everything about Metro will eventually be disposed of by Microsoft, which is what should happen, in some future update or new version of Windows. Maybe Windows 9. Smart, Mozilla!
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Oh Mozilla.. though you're already wasting enough time implementing crap nobody wants in Firefox, how can you ever HAVE time if you don't TAKE time?
::merovingian::
Release a service pack (or call it an update) with the traditional start button and desktop for Windows 8 users, and then remember how much this sucked for everyone come Windows 9 time.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Seems to already exist.
we're now all tablet
Pity.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
BREAKING NEWS!
!!!
headline.
Steve Balmer is jumping up and down on his beach chair.
VLC just put the first ModernUI betal on the Windows store: http://apps.microsoft.com/wind...
It's a bit stupid to complain that there aren't any users if there hasn't been a release yet.
I assume just having a fullscreen version of Mozilla for the Metro interface isn't good enough?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Perhaps Mozilla knows that the Metro Start screen and everything about Metro will eventually be disposed of by Microsoft, which is what should happen, in some future update or new version of Windows. Maybe Windows 9. Smart, Mozilla!
Yeah, I'd love to get back to desktop windows on my tablet. Just need to sharpen my nails and get that stylus back in style. In our house we have both an iPad and a Surface2 - the touch interface of Surface is far superior to the iPad, but desktop Windows is hopeless.
So Windows 8 has too low a market share but desktop Linux support is a great investment of time. Mozilla is the same organization that tried to make an antitrust stink out of the Metro browser as well. They seem to have a vested interest in portraying it as failure.
You heard it here first, a company with $311 million in revenues and 600+ employees "doesn't have the scale" to do a tweaked interface for their primary product.
Don't get me wrong, I loathe Metro, and I fully agree with their assertion that not enough users are adopting Metro to make it worth it... but saying they don't have the scale is silly.
Note: I realize that TFA actually says the scale of their competitors is the reason, but I think the summary's "don't have the scale" is analogous.
ModernUI. That must make AOL very happy.
I actually kind of like the Surface2 for some tasks, since it's thin and light for a 10" tablet and has a nice keyboard and a really nice screen. I often use it as a second or tertiary screen while I'm working since it's pretty easy to drop in to an RDP session or open Office documents and it can deal with printers and scanners just as well as any Windows 8 PC. It's a genuine workplace tablet.
But web browsing on it BLOWS. Metro-IE has to be switched to desktop mode to make any configuration changes (say, changing your default search engine or adding a TPL), but desktop-IE's controls are too damned small to be used with a finger and switching back and forth is PITA as well. Tabs and favorites are a hassle in Metro mode. It's just too much an ugly duckling. Windows RT has another general purpose browser, UC Browser, but that doesn't really improve the user experience over Metro-IE.
I actually find myself using the Metro-based NewsBento for about 75% of the web browsing I do on my Surface2. NewsBento is an RSS reader, which takes care of most of my normal sort of reading, but that doesn't really help for quick searches. I otherwise get a better web browsing experience with Firefox on my 5" phone than on a 10" tablet with IE.
So anyway, I want a decent arm's length, touch interface browsing experience for the devices I have. Microsoft doesn't give it to me, and I've been holding out hope for Firefox (or to a lesser extent Google) to make something decent. Honestly, if the Surface2 had a decent web browser (and a better Metro-based local media player, though VLC was just released for Metro a couple days ago), it would be a vastly more credible general-purpose mobile device.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Translation: I'm a Redmond shill trying to sound reasonable, but I can't help but make blatantly pro-Redmond statements like "significantly better than a comparative Tablet OS"
Do you have any fucking shame? More importantly, do you think we're fucking idiots that we don't recognize you for who you are?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Guess the battle they've picked is the one that involves butchering the browser to the point where it looks exactly like chrome (see upcomming australis builds).
.. so that it doesn't lock the whole thing up ("program not responding") for 2 or 3 minutes at a time, while waiting to negotiate connections?
THAT would be worth investing some resources in.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Arrogantly ignored your piss ant little company with an asshole IT dude whose business is so insignificant it can be run on tablets. Sweet.
Stop incorrectly comparing the Metro "situation" to simple user interface choices
Its a fundamentally [One Egomanical] User Interface dreamed up by a small Clique inside Microsoft that is now gone
Why propagate a "bad" Management Personnel decision.. end it
Another bad decision from Firefox. My company's moving to Windows 8. We'll be sticking with Chrome, which has a simple toggle between standard and metro. Every laptop made today is a touchscreen, and Windows 8 is awesome on a touchscreen.
I don't respond to AC's.
Tell that to my dad, who used to be perfectly happy playing Freecell, and writing things down in a spreadsheet while crunching numbers with the calculator program (yes, you can do calculations in Excel, but no, he doesn't trust it). He also had a backup scheduled to run once a week.
In Windows 8.1, the godawful Calculator app takes up the entire screen, so good luck copying numbers back and forth. I tried to help him schedule a backup like before, but the only solution I found was a 3-freaking-lines-long powershell command. To top it off, Windows 8 is unable to read the backup files made by Windows XP (what the hell, Microsoft?!). And Freecell and Solitaire are nowhere to be found!
Vast improvement to home users my ass. It's harder to do things that used to be easy, and downright impossible to do things that used to be merely complicated.
More importantly, do you think we're fucking idiots that we don't recognize you for who you are?
If you can then you're not MS target audience. Plenty of fucking idiots with $$
Let Microsoft gobble up its own dog food while the rest of the world march on disregarding.
You know Microsoft has lost it when Metro was forced upon its server products.
And let this is a solemn warning to some of you Slashdot admin twits who wanted to 'Metro-fy' this very website, making everything preschool-minimalist, flat and touch-friendly, after the template of Windows 8 Metro UI.
Most of the world wants Metro out of our lives, and out of Windows. By 'out of Windows' we mean the entire Metro code stripped out, not a 'boot to desktop' option, a Start button or Start menu, not a 'dude just hack the registry or install Classic Shell'.
Take your Charms bar, your Metro tiles, your Bing-powered weather and news aggregator apps, your Windows app store, your Skydrive/Onedrive/cloud/Microsoft account integration and shove it up where the sun don't shine. Thank you.
I expect Mozilla to now cancel Firefox for Linux, given that it has lower adoption than Windows 8, just sayin'.
Nobody's using that crappy interface anyway. I use Windows 8.1 myself and it's fairly easy to completely hide almost all elements of that awful thing and stay completely in the classic desktop environment. With the addition of Start 8 you can have the START button back and disable all those useless 'charms' (stupid name too) and other 'modern' crap.
The classic Firefox works just fine on the desktop where it belongs, as do the other browsers by the way.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Re Freecell and Solitaire, search for "Microsoft Solitaire Collection" in the Windows Store.
Translation: I'm a Redmond shill trying to sound reasonable, but I can't help but make blatantly pro-Redmond statements like "significantly better than a comparative Tablet OS"
Do you have any fucking shame? More importantly, do you think we're fucking idiots that we don't recognize you for who you are?
Frankly, yours was quite stupid comment too.
Metro!=Windows 8
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Now what would prompt a visceral reaction like that? Business is bad perhaps? You've bet the family home on the wrong horse?
So the "no beta" link goes right back to the front page. I can have the front page without beta, or read the stories? I'm off somewhere else.
If enought want to support Firefox on Win8, then Win8 will succeed! As of now though, Microsoft doesn't want Firefox to succeded on Win8. Savvy consumers will only buy the things that support the things they want to be supported.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
This slashdor random Be ta is annoying more than Win 8
aaaaaaa
That's not true. On Windows 8, calc.exe remains a windowed desktop app that's identical to what it was in Windows 7.
As for Freecell (and Minesweeper) they were considerably enhanced and are now touch friendly. My mother plays the daily challenges every day.
There's more metro than mac.
This is stupid.
" Mozilla says it simply does not have the resources nor the scale of its competitors, and it has to pick its battles. "
And one of the battles it picked not to fight was the new Windows 8 UI? I think that just about says it all. Get busy, Microsoft! This was a turkey!
The main advantage at this point to the Win8 ARM platforms is the epic battery life
There are plenty of Windows desktop apps that have no close WinRT counterpart. If your workflow relies on one of those, you can't complete your workflow on a Windows RT device unless you pay for a cellular data plan so that you can RDP to a PC elsewhere on the Internet. And for that price, you might as well just buy a laptop and a spare battery.
And yet you bought and use Windows 8 rather than abstaining and hitting MS in the pocket book where it counts.
What new laptop should people buy instead? A MacBook, which is even more expensive?
Translation of the translation: I'm a militant Linux zealot who gets his panties in a twist when I see comments that are favorable toward Microsoft, a company I hate with a passion because I'm an asshole who's unhappy with my life (both social and professional sides). I am a fucking idiot, but I'll accuse others of being such to make me feel better about myself.
Since the days of Windows 1.0 I have always quickly upgraded to the latest version. I could list some really great things about Windows 8.1, but I am not going to waste my time. Instead, I want to talk briefly talk about how Microsoft has been inept for a long time.
I remember when I bought my Timex-Microsoft Datalink watch, back in 1994. Back then there was no such thing as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The watch really couldn't do too much and had to be programmed by holding it up to the monitor as it flashed black and white stripes at it. Microsoft could of had a huge jump in the wearable computing sector and today everybody would be praising their name, but they had no VISION. So they dropped the ball and now they can watch as Google, Apple, Samsung and rest of the computing world release their own watches, and who cares whatever half-baked watch Microsoft eventually releases -- they had a had a TWENTY YEAR JUMP on the whole world but had no sense to take advantage of it. I have to list this, because it demonstrates how far back Microsoft's mental incapability goes. Every one of their CEOs from Bill gates on had little long-term sense, and just wished to milk their initial success.
"The Lost Years": Notice how even Microsoft now refers to the "lost years", meaning the lost decade. They can't even put their finger on what they are trying to express, because their corporate policy demands they praise DotNet to the high heavens. The promise of DotNet was that everything would perform so much better than straight C/C++ APIs (haha) and be faster and more compact (haha again). DotNet was the very epitome of throwing more CPU power at problems and "gee, don't worry -- CPU speed doubles every two years anyhow". What a joke. This is why they had to create WinRT -- to make a faster API because regular DotNet could never be stomached on the slower low-power processors. Google had no problem with Android, because they already had the world's greatest kernel called Linux. The "Lost Years" are the DotNet years. And DotNet is such a stupid name. Which brings me to the next topic:
The first Windows Phones had a trash Windows interface -- so they were rejected. Windows Phone 7 had internals too sickening to fathom: MS in its "wisdom" decided it was a C# DotNet world and that apps should never do anything so risky as run some proper code such as SQLite -- or any other code the rest of the world runs. Windows Phone 7 deserved to die. Now they release a brand new phone with brand new internals and interface -- so what do they name it? "Windows Phone" is already associated with trash. "Windows Phone 7" equals "trash 7". So they named it "trash 8". Yeah, that sure means a lot to the average person who has no idea what WinRT even means. They should have named it "WinPhone" and "WinPad" and "WinOS" which would of really rung a bell with their users and signified something had actually changed for the better; as in, iOS type of better. Somebody go claim those websites and trademarks to mess MS over. Even the name "Metro" was too generically dumb, and now "Modern UI" signifies nothing. A catchy name can motivate a user base, but a bland stupid name -- effects things for the worse.
Design Sucks: A couple years back when MS was so proud to reveal their new "Metro" interface or TIFKAM (The Interface Formerly Known As Metro) I could not control my initial reaction. I was shocked and my jaw dropped open and I kept staring at the screenshots, saying again and again "They've Gone Insane!" Look at the old Windows 7 logo -- it was the most beautiful and organic ever produced by Microsoft. Windows 8 logo could of been drawn by any idiot with a ruler and a crayon. Sure, the total flat design has a practicality about it, but interfaces are in many ways becoming more beautiful and organic, not harsh and robotic. Also, UI's are becoming more customizable. They do not want ...
Forced Appearance! Windows early on had lots of col
Something is Flamebait isn't it's untrue. Here this was modded flamebait because a couple of Windoze fanboiz didn't like what my employer was doing with a rival platform. Slashdot needs to publish mods.
I installed FF for W8 longtime ago on my Surface Pro but couldn't make it run in Metro UI.
Since I saw these posts I figured that something might be wrong.
Apparently, you have to make it the default browser to get into the Metro UI?!
Can't Mozilla just make a separate App for Windows Store?
No wonder there's low adoption, thousands must have this same issue.
Best,
Jacques
Windows, if you can afford buying them!