This is an understandable decision from Firefox's perspective. Windows 8/8.1 are
okay on tablets, but if the interface and implementation requires a lot of
polish, they need the user base to get it there.
I think one problem with Metro adoption has actually been the way one browser
vendor in particular treated its users. I'm talking, of course, of Google
Chrome. For a long period of time, reinstalling Chrome meant getting dropped
into a hideous, single-window "Metro" implementation that offered none of the
benefits of the environment, and every downside. I would prefer to use IE
in full screen mode over "Chrome in Windows 8 Mode" and that's saying something.
Now Google's "Windows 8 Mode" is essentially a ChromeOS implementation in
Windows, which I sort of think is cool, and mostly think is just perplexing for
users.
I wonder why no one - Mozilla, Google, Opera - has implemented exactly what IE
does. A very simple interface with not a lot of bells and whistles, an address
bar, a tab picker, and a full screen browser. Maybe it's because Google Chrome
doesn't seem to work well with multitouch - support seems to be based on the
whims of the version number - and Mozilla's engine similarly seems to have
interactivity issues.
As a result, I get the feeling when using these browsers on a Surface Pro that
no one at Google or Mozilla is too. For over a year, pinch to zoom and other
multi-touch gestures didn't work on Chrome. Or they would on Canary or Dev, but
only for a few weeks, before suddenly not working again. Pinch to zoom is
abhorrent on Firefox - a clunky experience that makes me regret doing it every
time. And scrolling requires two fingers on Firefox - or at least it does in
Nightly now - and so for the longest time I thought it didn't work at all. I
don't know why they've decided their browser is the only one that needs two
fingers to scroll. Chrome works terribly on a mid to high DPI display. I can't
for the life of me close a tab.
The result is clunky. Users don't want clunky things. Chrome defaulting to Metro
mode for Windows 8 users during a period when the browser barely or
intermittently supported touch leaves me with only foul things to say to a Chrome dev
or their program manager if I ever meet one. Likewise, I can't understand why
Firefox is making Firefox in Metro a major project - give me a full screen
interface to Gecko with a big address bar at the top or bottom and let me use
that.
EDIT: WHOA! Firefox Nightly's (30.x) Windows 8 mode is actually decent. Pinching to zoom doesn't inflict masochistic terrors on me, and one finger is all that's necessary to scroll. When did this happen and why doesn't someone tell people about it?
Firefox for Metro was pretty much what you described -- at least, that was our goal. It has a very simple UI, which is very similar in spirit to IE11 for Metro.
However, this meant adding entire new input/graphics/widget backends to the Gecko platform using a combination of WinRT and Win32 APIs, and a long slog to get those stable and responsive enough to ship to millions of users. And designing and build a new UI (even a minimal one) means we don't get existing desktop Firefox features "for free" -- stuff like private browsing, add-ons, bookmarking, password management, sync...
Even minimal browsers have a surprisingly large surface area if you want them to be usable for daily browsing. We cut out a lot of that stuff for the first release, but that also means we had a long road ahead toward a feature set that was competitive with other browsers (including desktop Firefox, or Firefox for Android). And that's not even getting into technical issues with the Metro environment, like the inability to run the NPAPI version of Flash Player...
Just as one example: When writing a browser, you need to do your own text rendering and layout. That means you can't rely on the OS to handle things like select/copy/paste. So you end up implementing your own touch-friendly selection UI, and making it match the OS behavior as much as possible. This turns out to be a minefield of subtleties and edge cases.
I've played with the Firefox Metro UI for about half an hour now - obviously since my post - and I really like it. It's a solid start.
Is it possible that the reason you're seeing low use is because users aren't aware the option exists? Also, why are features in Firefox Metro not ported to Desktop? Touch zoom and scroll for example, are vastly superior in Windows 8 Mode right now.
Yes, lack of awareness was definitely a major contributor to lack of usage. See my other comments on this post for more on that topic.
Firefox for Metro has been a testbed for graphics/scrolling/touch technology that we want to eventually land in Firefox for desktop. Things like off-main-thread compositing were enabled in Windows Metro before Windows desktop because (a) responsive scrolling and zooming is more critical in a browser designed for touch, and (b) supporting it just in the new Windows 8 environment requires less development and testing than supporting it across all the desktop OS versions where Firefox runs (and integrating it into existing graphics and input code for those platforms). But it should all make its way into the desktop version eventually.
Agreed been using windows 8/8.1 since release have never heard of this pretty much ditched my remaining Firefox use for chrome because of the lack of any sort of visible attempt. The state of Firefox for desktop made it feel like Firefox was giving up on windows in general.
The first thing I did after getting Windows 8/8.1 on my new laptop was to install StartIsBack and disable all the Metro/Modern UI stuff. I find it very annoying (especially in a non-touch environment).
I'm fine with Mozilla focusing on Firefox for Desktop and Android. I'm a big user of both.
Yeah. Firefox on desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows), Firefox for Android, and Firefox OS (for that mobile phone competition angle). No need for Firefox on Metro right now (hardly any users and the ones there are don't know what different browsers are anyway) or Firefox on iOS (since it would just be a UI skin over the gimped version of Mobile Safari thanks to Apple's anti-competitive rules).
Regarding #4, Microsoft doesn't allow competing browsers on Windows RT anyway. So even the users forced to use Metro would never experience Firefox's Metro mode.
As noted in the linked blog post:
> At first, it looked like we would be locked out completely. We eventually broke open Metro (though never the RT line of ARM-based products) and we got to work.
Unless I missed something, you're allowed to make browsers for WinRT, but for "security reasons" they disallow access to certain system calls that are necessary for a fast Javascript JIT. Only Internet Explorer gets to use those "private" system calls.
That is a annoying, but a ton more open than iOS which won't even let you do Javascript at all. So, you're fored into to doing a UI skin atop the slower, non-JIT Mobile Safari renderer.
I used it and submitted bug reports to help the team find issues. I hate Windows but am forced to use it in certain cases. While Windows 8 touch is not huge, I would prefer to have options other than IE for myself and other users.
I think one problem with Metro adoption has actually been the way one browser vendor in particular treated its users. I'm talking, of course, of Google Chrome. For a long period of time, reinstalling Chrome meant getting dropped into a hideous, single-window "Metro" implementation that offered none of the benefits of the environment, and every downside. I would prefer to use IE in full screen mode over "Chrome in Windows 8 Mode" and that's saying something.
Now Google's "Windows 8 Mode" is essentially a ChromeOS implementation in Windows, which I sort of think is cool, and mostly think is just perplexing for users.
I wonder why no one - Mozilla, Google, Opera - has implemented exactly what IE does. A very simple interface with not a lot of bells and whistles, an address bar, a tab picker, and a full screen browser. Maybe it's because Google Chrome doesn't seem to work well with multitouch - support seems to be based on the whims of the version number - and Mozilla's engine similarly seems to have interactivity issues.
As a result, I get the feeling when using these browsers on a Surface Pro that no one at Google or Mozilla is too. For over a year, pinch to zoom and other multi-touch gestures didn't work on Chrome. Or they would on Canary or Dev, but only for a few weeks, before suddenly not working again. Pinch to zoom is abhorrent on Firefox - a clunky experience that makes me regret doing it every time. And scrolling requires two fingers on Firefox - or at least it does in Nightly now - and so for the longest time I thought it didn't work at all. I don't know why they've decided their browser is the only one that needs two fingers to scroll. Chrome works terribly on a mid to high DPI display. I can't for the life of me close a tab.
The result is clunky. Users don't want clunky things. Chrome defaulting to Metro mode for Windows 8 users during a period when the browser barely or intermittently supported touch leaves me with only foul things to say to a Chrome dev or their program manager if I ever meet one. Likewise, I can't understand why Firefox is making Firefox in Metro a major project - give me a full screen interface to Gecko with a big address bar at the top or bottom and let me use that.
EDIT: WHOA! Firefox Nightly's (30.x) Windows 8 mode is actually decent. Pinching to zoom doesn't inflict masochistic terrors on me, and one finger is all that's necessary to scroll. When did this happen and why doesn't someone tell people about it?