Mozilla planning Win8 metro-specific Firefox browser


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Mozilla has announced plans to release a metro-fied version of Firefox, specifically for Windows 8. There?s not an awful lot of information, but what?s there makes interesting reading.

  • The goal is a new Gecko based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment. This will require a new Firefox front end and system integration points.
  • Firefox on Metro will be full screen and focused on touch interactions.
  • The browser will bring all of the Gecko capabilities to this new environment. Mozilla hope that the browser will run as a medium integrity app so that the win32 Firefox Gecko libraries can be accessed to avoiding a port to the new WinRT API for the bulk of the code.
  • The browser will feature an Appbar that will house common navigation controls (back, reload, etc.,) the Awesomebar, and some form of tabs.
  • It will support three ?snap? states - full screen, ~1/6th screen and ~5/6th screen depending on how the user ?docks? two full screen apps.

Mozilla hopes to have a proof of concept ready for the second quarter of 2012, and alpha and beta releases are expected to be made available in the second half of 2012.

Source: Hardware 2.0 (ZDNet) / Mozilla

I would not mind checking out what their design would look like for metro it might be nice. some of the application designs that i have seen for metro look rather nice. its the metro tiles themselves that are my only complaint.

They, and Chrome, Opera... have to develop a browser for WOA/Windos 8 as EU won't allow IE10 pre-installed with WOA/Windows 8 and will demand a browser ballot screen. As applications for WOA will be installed only via Microsoft's store, Microsoft will have to propose other browsers in its store.

It's a shame they couldn't stept things up and have this ready for the Win8 launch.

They, and Chrome, Opera... have to develop a browser for WOA/Windos 8 as EU won't allow IE10 pre-installed with WOA/Windows 8 and will demand a browser ballot screen. As applications for WOA will be installed only via Microsoft's store, Microsoft will have to propose other browsers in its store.

Citation needed.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
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