snort
Posted on 03/15/2014 3:36:50 AM PDT by markomalley
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.
Unfortunately, Nightingale says that as the team built, tested, and refined the product, Metro’s adoption has remained “pretty flat” and that Mozilla should focus its efforts “in places where we can reach more people.” While millions of people test pre-release versions of Firefox desktop on any given day, he notes the company has “never seen more than 1000 active daily users in the Metro environment.”
As a result, he pulled the plug:
This leaves us with a hard choice. We could ship it, but it means doing so without much real-world testing. That’s going to mean lots of bugs discovered in the field, requiring a lot of follow up engineering, design, and QA effort. To ship it without doing that follow up work is not an option. If we release a product, we maintain it through end of life. When I talk about the need to pick our battles, this feels like a bad one to pick: significant investment and low impact.
Nightingale notes that Metro could indeed take off one day, but he would rather play catch up than invest in a platform Firefox users “have shown little sign of adopting.” Since Mozilla is all about open source, the code will still be available.
Mozilla first noted a Metro version of Firefox was coming back in February 2012 and revealed a prototype in April 2012. The company then showed off a pre-release of Firefox for Windows 8 in October 2012 and offered a Nightly build in February 2013.
Cancelled launch dates have included December 10, 2013, February 4, 2014, and March 18, 2014. The regular delays should have been a hint: Metro just hasn’t worked out for Mozilla.
snort
I like Windows 8.
I love my Windows 8 but never use the Metro.
I can see how that would be a nice interface for tablets, but for computers it actually makes the experience awkward. It is almost as though none of the programmers in Redmond is a computer user. People get used to an experience over a period of 25 years and then they change it drastically? If there is one thing you do NOT want to do, that is it. Also applies to their new ribbon which replaced the dropdown menus in newer versions of Office. I absolutely hate that. Again, why make changes after everyone is familiar with the dropdown over 25 years? Idiots in Redmond.
The company is successful IN SPITE OF themselves.
Hmmm - I think I see a theme here.
I personally like the ribbon. I don’t have to try and figure out where the functions are, if I momentarily forget.
You are the first person I met who does.
I suspect the main opposition is really a screen space issue, not the change in how it was done.
All I can say is that 23 inch monitors are fairly cheap these days. :)
They make a terrible web browser that never worked well = Microsoft s fault.
Standard internet BS that will easily be bought by the usual trolls.
Change the screwy ribbon to old Menu:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19323/bring-office-2003-menus-back-to-2010-with-ubitmenu/
Very slick.
I don’t have Windows 8, but I am guessing the ribbon in the OS is similar to what they did to Office?
I am (or at least, was) an accomplished Excel user. I never preferred Windows, but there were some things that I did like, and I liked Outlook and Excel. Great products, in my opinion.
Then my company had me upgrade Office from Office 2003.
What an abortion. I cannot believe what they did to the interface, never mind performance. Simply opening a document is so sluggish it makes me grit my teeth every time I have to do that, which is often.
But it is the “Ribbon” interface that has me flabbergasted. It makes ZERO sense to me, and after using it for months, I still struggle with it. I find it extraordinarily inefficient and non-intuitive.
Looking under “View” to find macros?????
What were they thinking?
I think that is a valid complaint because that would be, at least in my mind, an edit function.
They should have left the categories alone to what people were already familiar with.
I work in IT and I remember when they took away my Office 2003 way back when. I too did’t like the ribbon but you know, you had to adjust. They changed many of the keystroke shortcuts that had become almost muscle reflexes for me.
So just this year, I’ve been consulting at a client who still has an XP box with Excel 2003. Oh boy, does it cause a hugely partial vacuum. Just take a peek at the differences in conditional formatting and you’ll see an example of what I mean.
And as for Outlook? Newer versions blow the 2003 version away by light years. I am stuck with Outlook 2003 for a couple more months as well at this client.
I am okay with 2010 Outlook. I am one of those people who never discards an email, so that is great for me due to the better handling of large PST files in the newer version.
It is Excel I have the major issue with. Even the guts...now, you cannot calculate a median value in a pivot table! Why the H E double hockey sticks did they have to change something like THAT?
“I love my Windows 8 but never use the Metro.”
Correct - Windows 8 without Metro is great as a computer platform. Where Metro really shines is on touch screen tablets. I have an MS Surface and I love it - so much easier to use and organize. My old iPod seems definitely clunky by comparison.
This is nothing more than spin. The Windows 8 platform is used by virtually the same number of users that Windows 7 had at this point in its release. The problem for Mozilla is most Windows 8 users are simply using the preinstalled IE browser, or are using Chrome for those not using the Metro interface.
Has nothing to do with the platform. Mozilla has been losing marketshare to Google for years, and since Windows 8, IE has seen a dramatic increase in users as well.
How to kill a good browser?
Rapid Release new versions every 6 weeks so 3rd parties don’t have time to update add-ons.
Mozille took a good browser and is killing it.
I stopped at FF 15 because every new release had new conflicts and problems with add-ons, Java, Adobe Flash and PDFs.
It wasn’t worth trying to keep FF updated. Also, FF has effectively become bloatware.
Thanks for posting that.
Opera is a better browser than all of them.
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