Mozilla's Metro-friendly Firefox for Win 8.1 to arrive in December

Touchy browser for x86 PCs that want to be tabs

By Gavin Clarke, 19th August 2013

Email delivery: Hate phishing emails? You'll love DMARC

A Metro-friendly version of Firefox is finally coming to Windows 8, more than a year after Mozilla first floated the new browser.

Mozilla’s Firefox planners have pegged 10 December as the release date for the first iteration of the browser to support Microsoft’s boxy, fondleable interface.

Builds of Firefox 26 with unfinished Metro capabilities will be made available through the Aurora development channel between now and December.

The browser is for Windows 8 running on regular desktops and Microsoft Surface fondleslabs. The plan emerged at a meeting of Mozilla’s Firefox planning team on Wednesday.

Mozilla had released a preview edition of Firefox for Windows 8's Metro interface in October, but the second foot hadn’t dropped on a final release.

Instead, cutting-edge Firefox users had to rely on preview builds through nightly channels.

There was no word on why Mozilla has not moved forward, but Windows 8 has proved unpopular thanks to Microsoft’s product designers insisting the Metro tile interface was the only way forward, ditching and their decision to relegate the Classic desktop experience.

A December release date now puts the Metro-capable version of Firefox onto the virtual shelves after Microsoft’s delivery of Windows 8.1 for desktop users on October 17. Mobile device users have to wait an extra 24 hours for their Win 8.1 fix.

Windows 8.1 restores, in part, the Classic experience with a Start Button, as well introducing an option to boot to the traditional start screen and the ability for Windows 8 apps to be displayed to the full size of the screen, rather than squeezed into rigid sizes.

It was possibly this last feature that would have cleared the way for Firefox’s creators to crack on.

Still, it’s unclear whether a version of Firefox is coming for the ARM-based Surface RT death pad from Microsoft that nobody is buying.

Mozilla said last year that Microsoft wouldn’t give it the APIs to build a version of Firefox for Surface RT, so it had no plans to build a browser for the device. ®

5 ways to prepare your advertising infrastructure for disaster

11 Reader Comments

5 ways to reduce advertising network latency

Implementing the tactics laid out in this whitepaper can help reduce your overall advertising network latency.

Reg Reader Research: SaaS based Email and Office Productivity Tools

Read this Reg reader report which provides advice and guidance for SMBs towards the use of SaaS based email and Office productivity tools.

Email delivery: 4 steps to get more email to the inbox

This whitepaper lists some steps and information that will give you the best opportunity to achieve an amazing sender reputation.

High Performance for All

While HPC is not new, it has traditionally been seen as a specialist area – is it now geared up to meet more mainstream requirements?

5 ways to prepare your advertising infrastructure for disaster

Being prepared allows your brand to greatly improve your advertising infrastructure performance and reliability that, in the end, will boost confidence in your brand.

Search more Resources