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."

Comments

Good

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Re:Good

[koan]

Now if only the metrosexuals would follow that advice...

Re:Good

[sideslash]

The idea some people got that all existing Windows apps were supposed to be rewritten as Modern Apps is certainly wrong.

However, the idea that the WinRT / Modern App platform needs to go away in a future Windows version is also misguided. What you refer to as "Metro" fills a useful function that isn't otherwise served on Windows, which is enabling touch screen use, and it does a very nice job of that. True, there aren't many Windows tablets or touch monitors out there, but the number of them is increasing every day, and it would be stupid of Microsoft to ditch the whole WinRT effort now.

If you want to make the case that keyboard and mouse users shouldn't have to look at the Modern UI if they don't want to... why then I will heartily agree.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, keep the churn and bloat of FF off of Windows.

Re:Good

[frdmfghtr]

Before I agree or disagree, I have to ask: are you equating the Modern UI with WinRT? Unless I'm mistaken, they are not the same thing. WinRT uses the Modern UI but the Modern UI is not exclusive to WinRT.

Having said that, I would disagree and state that WinRT does need to go away; if it looks like Windows and feels like Windows but doesn't run Windows apps then it's confusing.

At the same time, I recently upgraded my laptop from Win7 to Win 8.1 (I got the $15 upgrade to Win8 Pro way back when) and I'm getting used to the Start menu now being the Modern UI Start screen. When I remote in using Remote Desktop from my iPad, it feels quite natural and useful. When I'm at my machine and using a mouse, not so much.

Re:Good

[bondsbw]

Modern UI is not exclusive to WinRT.

No, Modern UI is exclusive to WinRT, unless you're talking about skinning a desktop application to look like a Modern UI application. But it won't be able to integrate with all the WinRT services or run in a metro frame (full-screen independent of the desktop).

There is an exception to this rule, the default web browser. Web browsers are the only apps (that I know of) that can hook into some of the Modern UI capabilities without having to be built for WinRT. You can also download them without going through the Windows Store. This is how Chrome is allowed to have a Modern UI mode. But it requires the application to be running as the default web browser, meaning it's not a feasible workaround for doing the same with other applications.

Re:Good

[SJHillman]

The way I understood his post is that we shouldn't abandon Metro because it serves a purpose on RT, regardless of whether or not it belongs on other platforms. I don't think RT needs to go away so much as it needs a name that doesn't use "Windows"

Re:Good

[cbhacking]

You are (very) mistaken. WinRT (Windows RunTime) is an API set, a platform for running what Microsoft has (at various times) called "Metro", "Modern", "Immersive", and "Windows Store" apps. While you can make a full-screen touch-friendly UI without using WinRT, you need to use WinRT to integrate with the other "app" stuff that Win8.x does (the new task switcher, the sandboxing, the snapping, the automatic suspension in the background, etc.). To be fair, Firefox probably wasn't really trying to do that (the sandbox part, in particular, would be Really Good for them to have but would be a lot of work) so I expect it was more like what Chrome is doing, where they tack some Win32 UI functions onto their otherwise-traditional browser.

Windows RT, on the other hand, is completely different from WinRT. It can run WinRT apps, but saying they're the same thing would be like saying that Linux and the JVM are the same thing. Well, aside from the fact that those are made by different companies and don't have idiotically similar names... To the best of my knowledge, there was no real effort to port Firefox to Windows RT. I've tried doing that port myself (as a desktop application for jailbroken RT systems, not as a "Metro"/WinRT app) and it would be a tremendous amount of work.

Re:Good

[roc97007]

Thanks very much, I was powerful confused by earlier posts. So to paraphrase, WinRT is the run time API for what we call Metro, (on Intel and ARM) and Windows RT is that version of Windows (8, currently) that runs on ARM? Wow, no wonder people are confused.

Re:Good

[sideslash]

Maybe a bit of confusion, but in my opinion not so bad. Windows RT ARM tablets are so named because you can only install WinRT targeting apps on them.

If Microsoft called the devices and software layer WinTouch or something, that might have helped a little, as a lot of people have been disappointed that a "Windows" computer can't run legacy mouse/keyboard Windows apps.

Re:Good

[sideslash]

This is actually pretty funny, because it's true. And I wonder whether an unspoken reason they're walking away from WinRT is due to the sandboxed nature of the new subsystem, that actually rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior in terms of memory management and CPU binding. To put it bluntly, maybe FF is too bloated to live inside WinRT without a huge rewrite.

Re:Good

[Richy_T]

Windows RT, on the other hand, is completely different from WinRT

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Good

[LordLimecat]

WinRT is a stripped down version of Windows that does not include the desktop or related functionality. Windows on the desktop is a superset of WinRT and includes "the interface formerly known as Metro".

Re:Good

[LordLimecat]

Thats not correct. Windows RT is an actual product name for an OS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

would be cool if they issued free upgrades to windows 9 to replace our current metro filled skydrive up your face systems to even more skydrive-up-your-ass systems now, would it

Re:Good

[Bing Tsher E]

The Windows 8 ARM devices need to cease to exist now. Win 8 tablets with modern Atom processors exist, priced at under $300 from vendors like Dell. The market for "priced less" Windows RT tablets has been superseded by the new Windows 8.1 tablets. I am typing this on my Dell Venue 8 Pro.

Re:Good

[sideslash]

That's technically true, and you could raise the same objection if you hear someone talking about an "Android ARM tablet". I think my general point still holds despite my informal usage, no?

Re:Good

[roc97007]

> If Microsoft called the devices and software layer WinTouch or something, that might have helped a little, as a lot of people have been disappointed that a "Windows" computer can't run legacy mouse/keyboard Windows apps.

IIRC that was true of Windows CE also, and cause considerable confusion back then. Everything old is new again etc etc.

I think that this is one more issue that stems with wanting to call everything "windows".

Re:Good

[roc97007]

I don't think Windows RT devices exist because they are "priced less". I think they exist so that Microsoft can show that they are a player in the ARM space. As a product, it doesn't need to succeed, it merely needs to exist.

I agree, though, that the user base could do without them.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't flame bait.. it's the truth.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

How about they just come out of the closet? They want the benefits of being gay without the negatives of it

Re:Good

[CohibaVancouver]

The Windows 8 ARM devices need to cease to exist now

The main advantage at this point to the Win8 ARM platforms is the epic battery life compared to their x86 counterparts. Atom is pretty good, but still not as good.

Re:Good

[Zero__Kelvin]

Oh come on! I can already hear the Reeses song in my head: Two great bloats that churn great together!

Re:Good

[exomondo]

Metro is fine for applications designed purely for touch devices but frankly desktop web browsers like Chrome and Firefox work fine in Windows 8 on touch devices and with a mouse and keyboard anyway so why bother creating a "Metro" version? I never saw the point in that at all.

Re:Good

[exomondo]

WinRT is a stripped down version of Windows that does not include the desktop or related functionality. Windows on the desktop is a superset of WinRT and includes "the interface formerly known as Metro".

No, WinRT is the Windows Runtime, it is an application platform for Metro apps. You are thinking of the operating system called Windows RT.

Re:Good

[TClevenger]

The idea some people got that all existing Windows apps were supposed to be rewritten as Modern Apps is certainly wrong.

What's the point of having nice big buttons to touch to launch an app if you still have to use a mouse to use the app?

Re:Good

[Sir_Sri]

What you refer to as "Metro" fills a useful function that isn't otherwise served on Windows, which is enabling touch screen use,

Except that I've used the touch versions of XP, Vista and 7 and they all worked fine without it. Actually they worked better, because your finger worked like your mouse which meant that the same UI worked for everything in exactly the same way, once you figured out the conventions for left and right click, and naturally you need to make some elements a bit larger for fat fingers to click on (which works well for mouse users on high res screens and mouse users with poor motor control).

But that's actually beside the point.

What I was getting at was really that Windows 8 is a marketplace disaster. If, as a result of that if microsoft completely or largely scraps the underlying technology that powers modern apps (the Metro language) then we're going to be starting from the beginning. Now they don't have to do that necessarily, but they might need or want to do significant rewrites of major pieces of functionality to try and make it their version of better for windows 9.

If you want to make the case that keyboard and mouse users shouldn't have to look at the Modern UI if they don't want to... why then I will heartily agree.

See this is the problem. Modern UI apps, that run in a window - which is something we might see patched into Windows 8.1.x or 8.2 or something, and is available from aftermarket stuff (from Stardock I think), already does that, and then they work, well, basically fine in that it's just another design language from microsoft and if you use it well it works well, and if you use it badly it works badly. And you don't need or want to block of desktop users and mobile/touch users. It's basically extending the gadget concept, and in general it's the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense on a second screen, a lot of small pieces of live updated information that tells you about all the stuff that isn't your immediate focus (the main screen) but that you can, at a glance, get an overview of many things all at once.

Re:Good

[Sir_Sri]

Free for Windows 8 users maybe, or at a reduced price. Apparently there are only about 25 million windows 8 users, and I would think a lot of them (myself included) either have Microsoft hardware, or are on institutional subscriptions and don't really see the upgrade cost either way.

When they launched windows 8 it was a dirt cheap upgrade. They might do something similar for windows 9.

Re:Good

[Solandri]

However, the idea that the WinRT / Modern App platform needs to go away in a future Windows version is also misguided. What you refer to as "Metro" fills a useful function that isn't otherwise served on Windows, which is enabling touch screen use, and it does a very nice job of that.

If that were all it did, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But the only way to sell a Metro app is through Microsoft's Store. And they take a 30% cut of anything sold in the store (introductory 20% deals notwithstanding).

Metro apps are Microsoft's attempt to convert the Windows software market into an iOS App Store-like walled garden, where Microsoft is the gatekeeper who collects a 30% toll on everything sold. As long as that remains true, it needs to go away.

And no Google's Play store is not the same. Google doesn't restrict app installation to the Play store. Toggle one setting ("allow installation from unknown sources") and you can install anything you want. You can install apps bought from other stores (Amazon being the most notable alternative). You can side-load apps via USB, microSD card, or cloud storage. Heck, you can download an app over any website.

Re:Good

[FuzzNugget]

Since you can only run one thing at a time, I'd be OK if they called it "Window"

Re:Good

[FuzzNugget]

If Microsoft called the devices and software layer WinTouch or something, that might have helped a little, as a lot of people have been disappointed that a "Windows" computer can't run legacy mouse/keyboard Windows apps.

Call it LoseTouch .. it works both ways!

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC that was true of Windows CE also, and cause considerable confusion back then. Everything old is new again etc etc.

I think that this is one more issue that stems with wanting to call everything "windows".

The confusion is intentional. Microsoft is trying to leverage their existing brand ("Windows") to sell units but are doing so without meeting the expectations behind that brand (Legacy applications, mouse + keyboard).

You are right that they did the same thing with WinCE and it backfired then as well; I don't know where MS gets their marketers, drop-outs probably.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just "Pane"...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can't do what I want to do, for longer?

Re:Good

[Trax3001BBS]

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 don't fix it, they come out with another Operating System. They have a track record of every other OS not being generally accepted.
Win98 > ME (flop) > XP > Vista (Flop) > Win7 > whatever you want to call Win8 (Flop)

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a very confusing distinction... Microsoft didnt think this through, didnt they?

Re:Good

[nogginthenog]

You missed Win95 & Windows 2000.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's a pain in my ass, amirite

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

How about they just come out of the closet? They want the benefits of being gay without the negatives of it

I'm a homosexual. To me it looks more like they (metrosexuals) want all the negatives without any of the positives. Worry about shopping and style and crap, get harassed for being perceived as gay, yet they don't get to benefit from meaningful emotional / sexual relationships.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a very confusing distinction... Microsoft didnt think this through, didnt they?

Obviously not. They have a platform called Windows8, and a platform called WindowsRT. Both Windows 8 and WindowsRT tablets are sold. One will run legacy applications, the other won't, and most buyers don't know which is which. "Modern UI" applications have to intentionally be deployed to both. Ideally a developer should be able to easily deploy an app on Window 8, windows RT, and Windows Phone.

Re:Good

[LinuxIsGarbage]

You missed Win95 & Windows 2000.

Parent was looking at Consumer OS's. They arbitrarily chose Win95. Why not Win 3.11/Win3.1/Win 3.0, Win 2.11/Win2.0/Win 1.0?

Windows 2000 was on the business Side:
NT 3.1/ NT3.5/ NT3.51/ NT4/ Windows 2000 / (merge with Consumer at Windows XP)

Re: Good

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So you're saying that metrosexuals are to homosexuals what decoys are to live ICBM warheads? (Bonus pun: those decoys are sometimes called "penetration aids" :-))

Re:Good

[frdmfghtr]

Thanks for the clarification. When I read WinRT, I thought it was shorthand for "Windows RT".

Knowing that, I'll stand by my original comment and clarify that I meant "Windows RT", the tablet OS that looks and feels like Windows but won't run regular Windows apps like a Surface Pro can (or am I mistaken about the Surface Pro too?) then it needs to go away or a name change. It generates confusion. I mean, the difference between Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro is the feature set, but they run the same applications. The difference between a Surface and Surface Pro is much greater than that, unless you consider "running the same applications" just a "feature."

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows RT does include the desktop, Microsoft just won't sign any 3rd-party desktop applications, so you can't run them without a jailbreak. Stuff like Control Panel, Office, Command Prompt, etc all still exist and are accessible on Windows RT.

Re: Good

[ButchDeLoria]

I'm a homosexual too, but I don't give a fuck about shopping or style. Seems like metrosexuals just want to play stereotype.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows desktop runs with touch as well. We need to recognize our mistakes, ditch them, and look forward. I am an MS fan, but in my view Metro is, by far, the biggest mistake MS has done. Creating to "worlds" in the same operating system just makes people hate windows 8.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

WinRT is a stripped down version of Windows that does not include the desktop or related functionality. Windows on the desktop is a superset of WinRT and includes "the interface formerly known as Metro".

No, WinRT is the Windows Runtime, it is an application platform for Metro apps. You are thinking of the operating system called Windows RT.

LOL: MS naming schemes are f*cking bonkers

Re:Good

[cbhacking]

No, you're right about the Surface Pro. It's an x64 (Core i5 to be specific) tablet which runs Windows 8[.1] Pro.

For Microsoft's *intended* use case (where you use the Store to get apps, simultaneously limiting your exposure to malware, having one place you can find the tools you need for your tasks, and giving MS a cut of every "purchase" [in quotes because DRM]), the Surface and Surface Pro do generally run the same applications. There are very few apps available (on the Store) for x86 but not for ARM, because generally speaking, it's either no effort at all (managed code) or a simple drop-down change in Visual Studio followed by a recompile.

VLC is the odd one out here, because it's native code but isn't compiled using Visual Studio (well, except for the UI). GCC can't target Windows RT yet, so at the moment they can't compile VLC for that platform.

Re:Good

[mpe]

For Microsoft's *intended* use case (where you use the Store to get apps, simultaneously limiting your exposure to malware, having one place you can find the tools you need for your tasks, and giving MS a cut of every "purchase" [in quotes because DRM]), the Surface and Surface Pro do generally run the same applications.

An app store may protect against non-Microsoft (approved) malware. But it will do the exact opposite with malware Microsoft (Apple or Google) either approves of or is being paid to diastribute. Even if you don't consider DRM to be malware there is still the NSA (and "friends") to look out for.

Re:Good

[exomondo]

Even if you don't consider DRM to be malware there is still the NSA (and "friends") to look out for.

If you're really that concerned about the NSA then you aren't using a computer or network for communications anyway.

Who in the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Who in the world...

[epyT-R]

overweight soccer moms running the weightwatchers app. Their kids chatting on failbook.

It's sad, but computing has finally become mainstream enough to start degenerating along with the rest of society.

Re:Who in the world...

[The Grim Reefer]

overweight soccer moms running the weightwatchers app. Their kids chatting on failbook.

It's sad, but computing has finally become mainstream enough to start degenerating along with the rest of society.

I suddenly feel very depressed.

Re:Who in the world...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a pompous, pretentious tosser.

Re:Who in the world...

[twistofsin]

No mod points, so I'll just repeat what the AC below me said:

You're a pompous, pretentious tosser.

Re:Who in the world...

[david_thornley]

Why is it sad that overweight soccer moms can use computers conveniently? How does that affect overweight software geeks?

Still works on it

[Laconique]

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.

The name Metro is already taken.

[Sique]

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.

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[Anonymous Coward]

Metro was never renamed to Modern UI. Modern UI is the actual interface, Metro is the design language used to create that interface. They are two separate things.

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[Tridus]

Not to mention trying to change the channel after Metro was met with an abysmal reaction. They didn't want another situation like Vista, where the name itself is toxic.

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[roc97007]

The problem is, like many Microsoft product names, "modern UI" is too generic to mean anything to the casual listener.

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[guises]

Yeah, whoever comes up with names at Microsoft really needs to get promoted to somewhere useless. The Xbox One, which is not the same as the Xbox one, and is in fact the Xbox three, being the sequel to the Xbox 360... that one is so stupid it makes me angry.

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[Sudline]

Actually it was. Metra was the name of the new tiled interface. After the threat to by sued because the Metro trademark, Microsoft asked to remove the name Metro in all document and sites from Microsoft.

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[Sique]

Metro is still illegal to use for anything at Microsoft in the E.U. Metro is a trademark of Metro AG (not only) in the computer business. So not even the design language can be named Metro in the E.U. without clashing with Metro AG. (And that's why I only see the new tiled surface of Microsoft Windows called Metro on Slashdot.)

And before someone asks: The yearly revenue of Metro AG (66 billion EUR ~ 90 billion USD) is larger than that of Microsoft (77 billion USD).

Re:The name Metro is already taken.

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Yeah, whoever comes up with names at Microsoft really needs to get promoted to somewhere useless. The Xbox One, which is not the same as the Xbox one, and is in fact the Xbox three, being the sequel to the Xbox 360... that one is so stupid it makes me angry.

They have a history of terrible names:

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs: (Replaced by Windows 7 based "Windows Thin PC ")

Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP before someone thankfully gave it a real name: Windows SteadyState

Their consumer AV is called "Microsoft Security Essentials". At least the business version has a real name: "Forefront"

Windows Live Essentials

Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Messenger service (source of SPAM).

Probably a tough choice to make.

[rmdingler]

Sometimes cutting your losses is a smart move.

Hopefully this is one of those times.

Re:Probably a tough choice to make.

[fwarren]

After 18 months, "Metro" is not a roaring success. Firefoxes absense on Metro will only hurt WinRT users. By definition, being a WinRT users they have already decided they are going to have a stripped down experience.

I don't think Mozilla is losing anything here.

Re:Probably a tough choice to make.

[Bing Tsher E]

I can and do sometimes run Seamonkey on my Win 8.1 tablet. Why I would even want to run the crippled version of Mozilla (presently called Firefox) is beyond me.

Re:Probably a tough choice to make.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Firefox codebase is newer and receives security updates and new features more frequently?

Why anyone would want to use one bloated app for IRC, web browsing, RSS, e-mail, newsgroups, etc... is beyond me. Especially when there are dozens of free open source softwares much better suited to each of those individual tasks (especially on a Tablet) than some AOL 6.0 wanna-be.

Re:Probably a tough choice to make.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because you're too strange to understand that a product not being 100% to your liking doesn't mean it's "crippled". If anything, it runs more addons than Seamonkey, runs on more OSes than Seamonkey, and is developed faster than Seamonkey, so your "crippled" argument is fundamentally flawed to begin with.

I'm willing to bet that people like you won't rest in your attempts to bash Firefox until everyone stops using Firefox, and then your preferred reskin of it (Seamonkey) will die a horrible death and you'll blame it on Mozilla as well.

Re:Probably a tough choice to make.

[sosume]

There is a larger market for Firefox in Windows Metro users than in Linux desktop users. Heck, the installed base of Windows 8 is larger than all Mac OS flavors combined. So why keep developing for these inferior audiences and ignore the big fish? This smells like anti-MS propaganda.

Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Zeio]

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.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Mashiki]

Despite that use Start8, Win8.x is usable without it. It just has a more annoying learning curve compared to what everyone else who's been using Windows since the mid-90's is used to however. Drop someone who never used a classic shell and not a problem though, the real problem as it was came to life because there was no easy method of transition. And that, will cause more people to throw a fit and rightfully so.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[cbhacking]

Some particular reason you chose to spend money instead of getting the free and open-source Classic Start Menu (from Classic Shell)? Seems kind of silly.

Anyhow, I happen to think you're an idiot if you can't use the same UI (and by far the most productive one) that's been present in Windows since Vista, namely "hit Start (or the Windows key), type a few letters of the program name, hit Enter". It's faster than any mouse-driven interaction and doesn't require manually finding anything in cascading menus *or* scrolling screens of tiles. But that's just, like, my opinion, man...

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[geek]

And yet you bought and use Windows 8 rather than abstaining and hitting MS in the pocket book where it counts. They really learned a lesson there.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[almechist]

Some particular reason you chose to spend money instead of getting the free and open-source Classic Start Menu (from Classic Shell)? Seems kind of silly.

Anyhow, I happen to think you're an idiot if you can't use the same UI (and by far the most productive one) that's been present in Windows since Vista, namely "hit Start (or the Windows key), type a few letters of the program name, hit Enter". It's faster than any mouse-driven interaction and doesn't require manually finding anything in cascading menus *or* scrolling screens of tiles. But that's just, like, my opinion, man...

It's questionable whether typing stuff, even just a few letters, should always be considered faster and/or more productive than using a mouse. Sometimes, especially on a laptop, it's a pain to keep shifting from mouse to keyboard and back. Besides, since when is running a particular program the only thing you would ever want to do on a given operating system?

Windows 8 if filled with non-intuitive commands, and offers almost nothing of value in return for scaling its rather steep learning curve. It wasn't wanted or needed by anyone outside Microsoft, and it will eventually be abandoned and completely forgotten by everyone outside of a few business textbooks, where it will stand forever as a classic example of a large corporation shooting itself in the foot.

Re: Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

I 'uninstalled' the metro apps, customised the start screen (read: made the tiles smaller) and basically ended up with a full-screen version of the Windows 7 'frequently used' start menu pane. Which is great, because I could care less about a readme for the ATI drivers. OCD sufferers rejoice!

The search functionality is actually more accurate (and faster) than the 7 iteration.

It took me all of 30 minutes to set up and figure out a workflow. This despite using 7 all day at work.

Sure, there are some components that really suck -- the network connection sidebar comes to mind -- but I have no idea what the majority is banging on about. Have you never used anything new before?

It took me longer to set up my Nexus 5 in a manner I was happy with.

Sheesh.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[SCPaPaJoe]

This all reminds me of the transition to win 95, or win 1. Hell, I can still remember playing with the Gem environment. I'll never forget the old DOS years when a new game meant an hour of fucking with config files so you could play. I just fixed a win 98 computer (not connected to the internet) that runs abandonware software for my job. I'm typing this now on my wife's win 8.1 tablet. Do I like it? Not much, but hear I am.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much, but hear I am.

I here you, buddy.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[DogDude]

You're wrong. It's very usable. I like it quite a lot, when using a touchscreen. It's kinda' awesome, actually.

That's just my opinion.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

MICROSOFT.WINDOWS.8.1.PROFESSIONAL.RTM.X64.VOLUME.ENGLISH.DVD-WZT
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:00CD32F833D9A8EA802D6722F1863D087BB7C709

Every heard of VLK?

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

The total lack of adoption of 8.x in the entire corporate world seems to indicate that you might be trivializing how bad this interface is. Especially metro-hijack with no ESC key and untrained people.

You against having a legacy skin for wrong people or must we learn by force by those who "know more" than others?

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[epyT-R]

So, if we're just supposed to use the search box for everything, why not just get rid of the rest of the interface and have a command prompt? Of course, having a simple menu in the corner that starts applications is probably faster if your hand is already on the mouse from previous tasks. It's metro that's the fault here, not start menus or mice or command prompts.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

That's strange. I don't have any of those installed and everything works just fine.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

I got used to the start screen. I never used the start menu to begin with mind you. Between hotkey'ed search, pinning apps to the menubar, and keystroke app launchers, there's no need. The only thing that shits me about the start screen itself is that I can't fit multiple tile groups into single columns, minor annoyance. The hot corners are annoying until you get used to the fact that they're there. A few minor annoyances here and there, "not usable" is a stretch but to each their own.

inb4 lolomgshill

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Knutsi]

I have dropped someone who has never used that classic shell into it. In fact, he has never really used a computer before. It's unbelieveably confusing for him. His laptop is Windows 8.1. It does not have touch screen. So, I cannot teach him the new Explorer, because he cannot swipe from the sides, and the mouse does different things depending on where he right-clicks. I added explorer to the taskbar in Deskop, and told him to use that. But then, there is no visible way to restart the computer og shut it down. While some of the metro apps (like Mail) would be good for him, they too are hard to use without swipes. Mixing the metro space with the desktop space is also terribly confusing.

The man is somewhat old, and new to computers, but he gets lost so fast on Windows 8 it's scary. I gave him an iPad, and he surfed. I can adapt, most users find that hard. If you are to push someone to adapt thus, it should be for great gain. I think the metro-desktop combination gives no such gain at present, and just serves to pull the otherwise excellent Windows 8 down. If they did not catch this is user testing, that is beyond my comprehention.

As good as metro is on tablets, it serves no real purpose on desktops and laptops other than a way to spread it, IMHO. So MS is sacrificing it's usability to gain a foothold in the tablet space. THAT appears to be working, but it made my friend struggle greatly with his first computer.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Arker]

"It's questionable whether typing stuff, even just a few letters, should always be considered faster and/or more productive than using a mouse."

No, it isnt, but keep telling yourself that.

"Sometimes, especially on a laptop, it's a pain to keep shifting from mouse to keyboard and back."

Exactly why you should avoid shifting away from the keyboard in the first place as much as possible.

"Besides, since when is running a particular program the only thing you would ever want to do on a given operating system?"

Well, running one program or another is in fact the only thing you would ever do an any OS. That's the entire point to the shell, and all the other stuff that has to be loaded underneath it. Am I misunderstanding you?

"Windows 8 if filled with non-intuitive commands,"

Like every other computer OS that's ever been or ever will be invented, yes.

"and offers almost nothing of value in return for scaling its rather steep learning curve."

Yeah, that I have to mostly agree with you on. It DOES offer some value - there are some real performance improvements over 7, and I have to give MS kudos for that - that's several releases in a row where they have managed to reverse their historical trend to ever-increasing system requirements - every MS system up through Vista was more bloated than the last and they have actually been trimming and tightening a bit with Win7 and then again with 8.

But the Metro interface is painful and stupid. The only point to it is to drive people to Windows Store and Windows Phones and for that reason alone I would like to see Win8 die painfully and profitless. The average end-user sees that upfront and experiences pain as a result and hates it, while s/he in most cases never has any call to consider whether it's more responsive, more stable, and has more free memory than the same machine would have running Win7, so to them it's a completely negative experience.

To the technically adept user it's a much more positive experience though, because we tend to naturally avoid the interface stupidity and are more likely to be aware of the improvements.

(A little historical note, "Metro" actually started in the early 90s with the Chicago team, who did a mock-up and a useability study before scrapping the idea. It gets dusted back off now because end users are no longer their customers in any statistically significant sense, and their entire focus right now is on OEM sales, Windows Store, and trying to find some way to get people on Windows Phone. )

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Arker]

"So, if we're just supposed to use the search box for everything, why not just get rid of the rest of the interface and have a command prompt? "

GUIs are like training wheels. But better, really - where the analogy falls down is that with training wheels you really have to get rid of them to get things going properly. Modern computers can typically run a simple GUI with idle resources so there is little or no benefit to unloading it. And even an advanced user will wind up shuffling through a menu looking for a seldom-used function now and then.

But for the stuff you do hundreds of times a day, every day, it's worth taking some time to work on eliminating the mouse wherever possible. Unless of course it's a task that you just cant do with the keyboard (drawing is the classic example) - the context switches back and forth between the two-handed position on the keyboard and the one-handed mouse-and-keyboard position are relatively high cost and with a tiny bit of thought most can be avoided.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[jones_supa]

Some particular reason you chose to spend money instead of getting the free and open-source Classic Start Menu (from Classic Shell)?

Just a quick nitpick: Classic Shell is still free but the recent versions are no longer open source.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

Still doesnt beat putting your stuff onto the start menu with a number before its name.

winkey + number. opens that program. it doesn't even take an enter to launch. no searching. no mouse. no multiple results. no typing any letters at all.

Or just putting the thing on the taskbar. one click. Or into a toolbar. one click.

it's fucking stupid you search for the programs you use all the time. and call that easy and better....

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[bumba2014]

No it isn't usable. Got our webserver with windows 2012 on it, nothing works, microsoft get your shit together, your configuration is a total mess... We are now in the process to get our server reinstalled with windows server 2008 on it... After 3 months of agony... (Even after install classic shell)

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[PsychoSlashDot]

It's questionable whether typing stuff, even just a few letters, should always be considered faster and/or more productive than using a mouse.

And then there's the simple fact that it frequently DOESN'T WORK. I frequently - as an administrator - use command prompts. So I press the Start button and type "cmd". Maybe three times out of ten on various systems owned by my customers, if I do this too quickly, Win7 simply gives up. It displays nothing. It looks like it's maybe thinking about it, but meanwhile I'm waiting. And waiting. And it doesn't work. So I hit backspace to go back to "cm". That usually doesn't help. So I add the "d" again and usually I get the search to find CMD.

Yay.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[ratboy666]

That upsets me the most. Just bought an Acer Iconia W700. Came with Windows 8 which I never used. What it is, I guess.

PS Works ok with Fedora 20. No application support for multi touch or the accelerometer though.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just your opinion, shill boy. Metro sucks HARD and is unusable. Everybody agrees but you.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

On my Windows 8 machine, I type just "C" and the command prompt is the first item on the list. I add an "M" to make it "CM" and the command prompt is the only one on the list.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[cbhacking]

Really? Wow, lame. I knew it was open source because it's been ported to Windows RT (requires jailbreak, of course), but taking it closed source is BS. Ah, well, the open version will live on anyhow.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[cbhacking]

Too bad there's more than 10 programs I use regularly (I currently have 18 on my taskbar, and there are many others that I'm not using at the moment). You can extend that system to use letters and such, of course, but then you're in a crappy position when you switch to new programs and need to re-learn those mappings.

Besides, search works for a lot more than just programs. You can find Control Panel items (even link directly to ones that would otherwise take multiple clicks, like "prox" for the system proxy settings) and files (which will open in their default associated program) as well. You can also hold Ctrl+Shift when hitting Enter to launch a program as Admin (very handy with, for example, CMD).

Oh, by the way, Win+[number row item] as a chord will open the taskbar icon (active or pinned) corresponding to that number. For example, on my system, Win+4 launches Powershell. Ctrl+Win+4 opens the most recent powershell if you have more than one, or a new one if you don't have any (this also works with the mouse, Ctrl+Click-on-taskbar-icon to open the most recently used instance if you have multiple instances running). Shift+Win+4 opens a new Powershell, even if I already have one open (this also works with the mouse). Ctrl+Shift+Win+4 will launch a new Powershell as Admin (again, works with mouse) whether I have any currently running or not.

Re:Windows 8.x is un-usable without Start8

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh ffs, unusable? Seriously? I am using Windows 8 since it appeared as a preview and to declare it unusable is so short sighted and self-centered that I don't know where to begin with. I mean, I don't miss it one single bit.

Even on Win7 I used it merely as a launcher for apps, as so called "auto complete box".

You can hate it (W8) as much as you want and it certainly has lots of problems on its own, but to declare Start menu as something not useful, but essential, that is just wrong.

Toni (don't have an account here, sorry).

How long will it take Microsoft to get the message

[CuteSteveJobs]

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.

Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[guanxi]

I assume it still runs on the Win8 desktop UI? Or are Win8 users unable to use Firefox outside a VM?

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[QuasiSteve]

Yes, it still works just fine as a desktop app. This is just about making a special version that plays nice in the Metro/Modern UI 'tiles' environment. You can already just drop a shortcut to the FireFox desktop app on there if you think it's a nice launcher, of course.

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[The MAZZTer]

Of course it does. Microsoft is very good with backwards compatibility, especially from NT onward, and that's assuming Mozilla wasn't interested in supporting their most commonly used platform (I'm pretty sure Windows is). This is just talking about the port to Metro, which has seen poor reception.

Of course I doubt Firefox would have been a "true" Metro app... I don't think Chrome was... as part of MS' attempt to be anti-competitive with web browsers in Windows 8, they allow the default web browser to inject itself into Metro, but still run outside of the sandbox (otherwise, they would have to use the IE rendering engine! At least AFAIK). But you still want the UI to look Metro. Anyway, if the browser is not the default, it can still run but only on the desktop in its traditional UI. This restriction also applies to IE.

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Tridus]

Unless you're using Windows RT as your OS, virtually everything that runs in Windows 7 also runs in Windows 8's desktop mode.

Unless ARM based Windows tablets really take off, there really won't be a whole lot lost from this decision.

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft absolutely sucks at backward compatibility. There s*** tons of apps that don't work on MS Windows 8 and many companies haven't updated either. At least with GNU/Linux I'm pretty confident most critical applications will continue to be available. The source is available thus so is the app.

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Zero__Kelvin]

" Microsoft is very good with backwards compatibility"

I am completely flabberghasted. They can't even keep backwards compatibility from one version of word to the next. It friggin blows my mind that someone would come here and post something that absurd. Seriously.

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only shitty ones that try to write to System32 or something that they shouldn't be doing. And most of those will work if you just turn on UAC.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[drinkmoreyuengling]

Pedal your bullshit elsewhere. Oh wait, this is /.? Carry on.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[maugle]

Bullshit? Not likely. My parents were just forced to buy a new version of Word, because the WORD documents they were getting sent looked like crap in older version of WORD they had.

Re:Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try OpenOffice. It does a better job at opening older Word files than Word does.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit? Not likely. My parents were just forced to buy a new version of Word, because the WORD documents they were getting sent looked like crap in older version of WORD they had.

That's forward compatibility, dear, not backwards compatibility.

Older versions of Word don't have the newer features so documents using those features are displayed incorrectly; this is hardly unique to Word. Modern HTML pages will not render correctly in Netscape 4.0 either.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically that's forward compatibility, not backward compatibility.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

> the WORD documents they were getting sent looked like crap in older version of WORD they had.
Do they look great in the newer version or just acceptably crap?

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[temcat]

Offtopic, but in addition to LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, FreeOffice (the free version of Softmaker Office) is very handy. Download it at freeoffice.com.

I mainly use Office 2003 with modern format addons, but also have LO and Softmaker Office Pro installed. The latter two saved me several times when Office 2003 freaked out on some docs.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is forwards compatibility (new documents opening in older software), not backwards compatibility (old documents opening on new software, or old software running on new OS). Very few companies support forwards compatibility for consumer software. Microsoft has done a better job than most.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Yes. Congratulations. You figured out, albeit late in the game, that people here have a clue. Go back to digg where you belong. Seriously.

Re: Does Firefox still run on Win8 desktop UI?

[Zero__Kelvin]

I prefer LibreOffice, and have been using Linux since 1997 or so, but I appreciate you emphasizing my point!

Win8

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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.

I don't get it

[drinkypoo]

Is it really that hard to slap a Metro interface on Firefox? And if so, does that tell us about Metro, or Firefox?

Re:I don't get it

[QuasiSteve]

Define 'a Metro interface'.

If you just mean the look&feel / 'touch interface'-friendliness, then no, it's not hard at all.

If you mean having it play nice in the Metro/Modern UI interface (the tiles thing, full-screen apps optionally with sidebar, live updates, notifications, all that)... apparently that's a bit harder. Just ask the VLC people.

Of course there's not much of a reason to even use that on desktop Windows anyway, but it would have been a pretty good step toward also providing FireFox for Windows RT / ARM-based devices like the Surface (not to be confused with the Surface Pro) and Windows Phone.

Re:I don't get it

[Tridus]

Yes.

I mean, strictly speaking it's entirely doable. But it's another UI to build, test, and support. That stuff isn't free, and Mozilla doesn't have infinite resources. Considering the general lack of interest in Metro and the fact that the current version works just fine on Windows 8 as a desktop application, they decided it wasn't worth the cost.

It's an entirely sensible thing to do. Metro is hardly setting the world on fire.

Re:I don't get it

[spire3661]

The only thing the VLC Metro app does is crash.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really that hard to slap a Metro interface on Firefox?

Yes. The Metro version of Firefox being worked on had no way for existing extensions to work in it, they would've had to create an entirely new extension framework.

And if so, does that tell us about Metro, or Firefox?

Metro, or whatever the fuck they're calling it this week.

It's not that it's not popular enough...

[The123king]

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.

Re:It's not that it's not popular enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

People still remember the Microsoft Bob, and it still makes many of us at least grin, if now smile. The Win8 might juts be same kinf of curiosity in the history of computing. It just depends on the Microsoft, if it is the last of their OS' or not.

Re:It's not that it's not popular enough...

[Streetlight]

And there was Clippy.Yikes!

Re:It's not that it's not popular enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've spent mod points on this thread, so AC. Otherwise I would post as Will.Woodhull.

Win8 is another Clippy, huh? At present I only have one acquaintance who is using it, and my support strategy is to dual boot her machine to Ubuntu when she yells for help. I'm just hoping she is stubborn enough to tough it out with Win8 for 4 more weeks, when Ubuntu 14.04 will be released. (Current version, 13.10, is okay, but 14.04 is going to be a five year LTS which means the autoupdates will keep her from bugging me for quite a while.)

Hint to moderators: this is "Off topic", but neither "Troll" nor "Flamebait". Some readers might find it "Informative".

Re:It's not that it's not popular enough...

[akozakie]

It's a dead platform anyway. I wonder if in 5 years we'll remember it as fondly as we currently remember Vista.

Hell no. There's no comparison between Vista and 8 flops beyond the fact of being a flop.

Vista was an unbelievably badly executed step in the right direction. Bugs, half-baked ideas, better security done wrong, etc, etc... but essentially simply a next version after XP. With sufficient patches it becomes entirely usable and Windows 7 is essentially what Vista should have been. Failed version, not a wierd experiment.

8 is a completely different case. Total redesign of the interface, new APIs, new business model, etc. Very bad ideas, but very well executed. The system itself is quite good, fast, stable and well made, certainly not worse than 7. It is simply the wrong design, a forced change of the ecosystem. That's something you can't fix with technical patches. You either accept the fact and scrap the (huge and costly) project, releasing Windows 9 as Windows 7++ (or heavily patching 8 reverting it to old design, but that's a HUGE patch, essentially making it a different product), or clench your teeth and press forward, hoping that after some "tuning" of the UI users will follow you whether they want it on not.

Two completely different types of failures. Vista was the new Windows ME(*), Win 8 is the new Microsoft Bob (**).

(*) Except ME wasn't fixed by the next version like in Vista/7 case, because MS already had something new almost ready - having worked on the NT family in the server/workstation segment for years they were ready to deploy it on desktops (as XP), so fixing ME would be a waste of time.

(**) Except Bob was just another product, not a way towards a new sustainable business model for the company (the store)...

Mozilla may be anticipating the removal of Metro

[Streetlight]

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!

Not enough time to waste?

[bsdasym]

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::

Re:Not enough time to waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

By switching the time of their developers from Windblows "Metro UI" to GTK3 in Linux, the work for that will get done twice as fast now.

Dear Microsoft

[koan]

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.

Press F11

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to already exist.

Re:Press F11

[cbhacking]

"Metro" is (was?) a lot more than just being full-screen. There's integration with the task switcher, support for snapping windows side-by-side, support for notifications, and so on. Making all that stuff work on something that wasn't written from the ground up to be a "Windows Store app" is hard. Chrome does it, but Google has a lot more resources than Mozilla.

Re:Press F11

[Anonymous Coward]

Google chose not to devote any more resources to GTK3, Mozilla chose not to devote any more resources to Metro (which would include writing an entirely new extension framework). I know which one gets my vote.

Re:How long will it take Microsoft to get the mess

[koan]

we're now all tablet

Pity.

Sounds worthy of

[Anonymous Coward]

BREAKING NEWS!
                                        !!!
headline.

At a carribean resort somewhere...

[JoeyRox]

Steve Balmer is jumping up and down on his beach chair.

Re:At a carribean resort somewhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile you'll be sucking faggot dicks down at the all male bathhouse.
 
And the world still turns...

Re:At a carribean resort somewhere...

[greenreaper]

If he liked it so much, he can always pay for the programmers to support it. He's a free man now, sort of!

In other news...

[dicobalt]

VLC just put the first ModernUI betal on the Windows store: http://apps.microsoft.com/wind...

Lack of users?

[ericloewe]

It's a bit stupid to complain that there aren't any users if there hasn't been a release yet.

Honest question

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I assume just having a fullscreen version of Mozilla for the Metro interface isn't good enough?

Re:Mozilla may be anticipating the removal of Metr

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Riiiiight

[drinkmoreyuengling]

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.

Re:Riiiiight

[Anonymous Coward]

Rust is for people do not konow how to program, in C or C++.

Re:Riiiiight

[MightyMartian]

Metro has a low market share; as in most users are happy with the classic desktop, and RT devices are such an insignificant market share that why would anyone bother developing for it? Besides, there are enough common UI toolkits for Linux and Windows that I doubt there's that much additional support involved.

Face it, Metro is a dismal failure on every front.

Doesn't have the scale?

[Guspaz]

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.

Re:Doesn't have the scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it's funny how Mozilla is still playing up the image of some small, scrappy upstart taking on the establishment. Fanboys eat this false David vs Goliath shit up so Mozilla keeps playing the role. Reading their flowery bullshit PR, you'd think they were still this little rag tag group of guys working out of a garage or something. You might even think they were feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and saving the world -- their PR is simply that good! Outside of 600+ employees, don't forget about the hundreds or even thousands of unpaid volunteers who contribute to Firefox and other Mozilla projects. Wonder how much volunteer effort Microsoft or Google get for their browsers??

Mozilla is completely full of feel-good-shit as usual.

Re:Doesn't have the scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh cry me a river. They clearly don't have the resources because they have other priorities. Yeesh. For every "sympathizer" like the ones you mention there's a gigantic asshole like you who just wants to paint them as though their piss is pure liquid malevolence. Are there more than two colors in your universe?

If nothing else, Mozilla has become what they are because their fanbase was always godawful. They were able to stay afloat not with the rainbows farted out of volunteer's assholes, but because they partnered with Google. I know, I'm one of those volunteers. And all I ever got was grief from assholes like you who only know how to demand and never give back. Enjoy the fruits of your cynical labor.

Re:Doesn't have the scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the one crying and whining like a little bitch. And wow, talk about a persecution complex!! "pure liquid malevolence" ? Did I make a single comment about Mozilla being great evil or some shit?? No where in there did I say anything about malevolence or sinister motives. I simply said they are not a small, scrappy upstart anymore (not for ten years now), like the image Moz is always trying to play up. I also said they're full of shit, which they are. The bullshit David vs Goliath image mostly appeals to geek fanboys with persecution complexes, one of which seems to be you. "sympathizer" -- what the fuck is there to sympathize with?? Is Mozilla a humanitarian mission or social movement or something?! There's seriously nothing more pathetic than a geek fanboy and his idiotic and insane rhetoric.

So you're pissed that you volunteered all this time and energy to a well-heeled organization and only got grief for it? What do you want, a medal or a god damn trophy?? Look, next time you want to volunteer, how about doing so at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter or something? You know, some organization which doesn't already have hundreds of employees and hundreds of millions in revenue. Unlike Moz and their stupid ass web browser, soup kitchens and homeless shelters can actually seriously claim to be improving the world and making it a better place.

ModernUI?

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

ModernUI. That must make AOL very happy.

Too much hate

[Anonymous Coward]

There is way too much hate for windows 8 on slashdot. Look, I'm a part-time windows, part-time linux user like most of the people here and fact is, windows 8 is really not that bad. I've used windows 8 since release and find it not only easier to use for about 90% of things, I also find its faster to doing it too. If you want someone to blame for Windows 8, blame the tablet market. Windows 8 and subsequently RT (though I don't think it'll be around much longer), are significantly better than a comparative Tablet OS. Modern apps need some work for the desktop environment and to be perfectly fair, Windows 8.1.1 does a lot to make the mouse/keyboard environment better. The ONLY thing that NEEDS improvement with windows 8 is a dedicated work environment. To me, Windows 8 is a vast improvement for average home users, while the tech community is bashing it, it doesn't change the metric data that proves its faster in just about every quantifiable way.

Re:Too much hate

[MightyMartian]

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?

Re:Too much hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: MightyMartian is an asshole who has never been with a woman. Disagreement with his very limited world view brings about accusations of shilling, because extreme stupidity makes debate too hard.

Re:Too much hate

[maugle]

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.

Re:Too much hate

[Anonymous Coward]

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 $$

Re:Too much hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Re Freecell and Solitaire, search for "Microsoft Solitaire Collection" in the Windows Store.

Re:Too much hate

[jones_supa]

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.

Re:Too much hate

[ljw1004]

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.

Re:Too much hate

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I hate to be the guy who defends Metro but...

[slaker]

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.

Re:I hate to be the guy who defends Metro but...

[Zero__Kelvin]

It's OK. You weren't. I stopped reading once I got most of the way through the subject line.

Re:I hate to be the guy who defends Metro but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You say web browsing in app-mode IE blows, but then give an example of a annoying one-time configuration change. I'm not sure how you consider the tabs and favorites a hassle, either. Touch the bottom bar and you get a list of tabs. Touch the tabs to switch. Favorites are a little weird setting up at first, but once you have some folders made, they're easily kept track of. Touch star to open up favorites bar, then the drop down list on the left to select a folder.

Re:I hate to be the guy who defends Metro but...

[slaker]

I would strongly prefer tabs and basic controls to remain on-screen in the first place.

Picking battles?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

What about fixing the existing browser

[n6kuy]

.. 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.

Re:What about fixing the existing browser

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen that happen and I use firefox all the time. Does this happen when you don't have a stable connection then?
I know on my phone it just says unable to load if I don't have a signal, but I don't have connection problems on my desktop at home or work so I haven't seen that kind of thing there.

Re:What about fixing the existing browser

[Anonymous Coward]

The singlethreadness of the browser or its UI really shows up like this, every single day on the Windows. But FF seems to care more about removing and breaking existing features instead of fixing them. They just don't get it that the good "experience" is not about hiding things from UI, but making the it snappy and responsive under any situation.

Re:What about fixing the existing browser

[jones_supa]

I do have Firefox occasionally go to "not responding".

Re: How long will it take Microsoft to get the mes

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrogantly ignored your piss ant little company with an asshole IT dude whose business is so insignificant it can be run on tablets. Sweet.

No this isn't relatable to Win95 or Win98

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Short sighted

[DogDude]

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.

Re:Short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like you're the ones who are short-sighted, not Mozilla. But then I'm sure in your world, any move that doesn't fall in line with YOUR needs is a "bad decision", right?

I mean, if you guys wanted YOU could adopt development of the Metro version of Firefox, or pay Mozilla to keep developing it. But that would require time, money and/or effort, which is what Mozilla doesn't have.

If you don't have the resources either then stop trying to paint Mozilla in an ill light. It just makes you come across as the most transparent of blame-deflecting idiots who moved to Windows 8 because "Ooh! Shiny new touchscreens!" and then suddenly had to blame other people for your short-sightedness.

Re:Short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

But that would require time, money and/or effort, which is what Mozilla doesn't have.

Yeah, 600+ employees, 300+ million in revenue, and hundreds or thousands of volunteers, but it's time and money which they lack! You Mozilla fanboys are as pathetic as they come.

Re:Short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so I'm pathetic for calling people out for being selfish whiners? How about actually put that brain of yours to thought before you sic your inner attack dog on me. They're a business. They have to prioritize their efforts. They really DON'T have the money to keep those 600 employees working on disparate projects, so the volunteers will have to step in like they did with Seamonkey and Thunderbird. Or did you think that writing a browser-based OS and many versions of Firefox for that many OSes could cost more than $300M? Or that all those volunteers and 600 employees know how to code well enough to contribute to Firefox? I seriously have to wonder if you put any thought into what you say.

Re:Short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Your company is the one making the bad decision, not Mozilla. Nobody wants of Win8, and all those who are stuck with it go out of their way to avoid Metro. Mozilla is using their money to improve their product for their core users -- exactly what MS should be doing! Then again, I don't believe you your "company" is switching to this Win8 piece of shit. Not unless it's run by complete morons.

Re:Short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

Not every windows laptop has a tochscreen, not by a long shot.

Re:Short sighted

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sweet marketing there MS - my company is changing over to Windows 8 too, it's so great, no, wait.. actually.. it's awesome!!

Re:Short sighted

[alexo]

My company's moving to Windows 8.

All 20-something employees?

Well done Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect Mozilla to now cancel Firefox for Linux, given that it has lower adoption than Windows 8, just sayin'.

Re:Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead, now all the developers that were working on "Metro" can concentrate on finishing their GTK3 migration. Thanks Mozilla!

Re:Bollocks.

[Mike Frett]

Unlike you Windows guys, we actually care enough to compile our own. As long as Firefox is Open Source, what you want will never happen. Sorry....and FYI Linux as a whole has more of an Install base than W8 and rapidly rising. So quit yer complainin' and move to a real OS that doesn't have an NSA backdoor. ktnkbye

Good idea!

[xenobyte]

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.

Re:Good idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh! I see one of the two classic favorites of the trolls: everybody and nobody. I'm somebody. I use Windows 8. Took me all of 10 minutes to get the hang of it and figure out where everything was. I'm in my late 30s, started with a TI 99/4a, moved to an Amiga 500, and finally ended up with a PC shortly before Windows 98 was released. It was easy for me to adapt and reap the benefits, why not you?

RIP Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox used to be a great browser. Now its a pile of shit on all platforms. It suffers from performance problems on OSX, it crashes on Windows and generally doesn't operate very well on most versions of Linux. The world would be better off without it. Its impossible to get the development community to look at real issues that it has (authenticating proxies, passthrough authentication). Its a browser for its fanboys, and it deserves to die. I've tried to supportn and champion it it for years but the development community is so far up its own arse that its useless to even ask for help. I've logged several issues with the developers and have not even received an acknowledgement from them.

As far as I'm concerned they can fuck off and die. I'd rather use Internet Explorer and Safari than Firefox.

Headline is wrong, of course

[wonkey_monkey]

Metro!=Windows 8

Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Now what would prompt a visceral reaction like that? Business is bad perhaps? You've bet the family home on the wrong horse?

beta still sucks

[backwardMechanic]

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.

The source is open!

[EzInKy]

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.

F-CK B3TA

[stooo]

This slashdor random Be ta is annoying more than Win 8

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Then why is there mac firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more metro than mac.

This is stupid.

This says it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

" 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!

Price of a cellular data plan for RDP

[tepples]

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.

Should people buy a MacBook?

[tepples]

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?

MICROSOFT INSANITY

[SnappyTech]

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

Modded flamebait? WTF?

[CuteSteveJobs]

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.

Low adoption? Can't even launch FF in Metro UI

[Anonymous Coward]

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

You are doing it wrong, iFan

[peacefool]

Windows, if you can afford buying them!