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If you're still waiting for Firefox on Windows 8, don't hold your breath

No fondleslab-friendly browser until March at the earliest

Firefox fans are going to have to wait a little bit longer before they can use their favorite web browser on Windows 8: the Mozilla team has pushed back a formal release of the software, due this month, to March 18 at the earliest.

The non-profit org has been promising a flavor of Firefox for Microsoft's touchscreen-friendly operating system for nearly two years, but progress has been glacial and much-delayed. Part of the problem is that Mozilla wants to make the browser available for Windows 8 as a normal desktop program and as an app from the online Windows Store, but it seems manpower has become more of an issue.

In October 2012 Mozilla started publishing very raw builds of the browser on a nightly basis, using the Australis user interface. The primitive code didn’t support add-ons or Adobe Flash, but Mozilla promised it was working on that.

In August the following year Mozilla said it had worked out the teething problems, and said the new browser would be ready in December 2013, to coincide with the release of Firefox 26. But the following month it delayed the release until Firefox 27, which was due out later this month but will now be released in February after everyone got two weeks off on holiday for Christmas.

Now meeting notes published by Mozilla say the Windows 8 code is going to be held back until the release of Firefox 28 on March 18, although given past form El Reg recommends you don’t get your hopes up quite yet – another delay looks distinctly possible. ®

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