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.
IMHO, Excel went down the tubes when they got past 2003. I didn’t like the GUI, (keep it simple, I’m working here!), and I have always hated the way something that worked in the last version doesn’t quite in the next. I refused to buy a newer version to open the “x” (docx, xlsx) files, and just downloaded Open Office.
I am wondering if you mean something different by 'calculate a median value' because in a Pivot, using (right-click) > Value Field Settings gives you the options to sum, average, std dev and others. (This would be a complete threadjack if we all suddenly go off on an Excel session - LOL)
Wait, scratch that. Median Value. Gotcha.
Just keep this in mind the next time you see some Microsoft shill on TV boasting about the adoption of Windows 8, and how it has been installed on tens of millions of computers, as if users are loving it. Only 1,000 Firefox users running Metro at any given time is ABYSMAL, and is a real world number. That's worse than the equivalent PMSNBC viewers for TV.
/rant.on
I'm in IT, and can't tell you how many times I've ever heard coworkers(usually the people in charge) use the empty headed phrase: "Change Is Good". Usually that's the response when people complain about changing to an undesirable product or upgrade. I usually make it a point to disagree, saying "No, POSITIVE Change Is GOOD". Going out of business, losing your job, or death is also change, but it isn't necessarily a situation where "Change Is Good" or an 'upgrade' being "progress". Just look at our President who wanted to implement "change" for a perfect example of change NOT being "good"....
/rant.off
I quite like Metro on my Windows tablet and Windows phone. I tried the FF beta for Metro, but it couldn’t compete with Internet Explorer on Metro, which is actually quite nice.
I can’t imagine not using Firefox in the future. I have so many privacy add-on now that just make using the internet so much more convenient. I block most every kind of annoyance that can be thrown at me. I even block pages that read my blocks and try to circumvent me.
Google has done fairly rapid regular updates to Chrome and I haven’t had any significant issues with browser extension updates (Symantec has been very timely with updates to the Identity Safe extension from Norton Internet Security).
They need to abandon Thunderbird too. Mozilla is not hesitant to ship incomplete or buggy T-Bird and then let us to suffer through fixes, if they ever come. Through the many “upgrades” it seems every other one is buggy to the point of distraction. Design by volunteer committee works no better that Central Planning Committee.
I have had T-Bird long enough to make it difficult to switch back to Outlook and not loose most of my files.
Agreed on all counts. Firefox on Windows 8 in the Metro environment was simply not a great experience.
If you install Classic shell, Windows 8 is familiar and works just fine. You even have the option of diving into Metro if you feel adventurous.
When you open any of the Office Suite apps, the Ribbon’s still there, but click on Menu link at left-top Ribbon, and it reverts to the Good Old 2003-07 Menu. It’s a tiny app, works beautifully, and stops gnashing of teeth. Heh.
I was hoping when I read that, that it was only the number of Metro/Firefox RELEASE TESTERS.
But you could be right, it might be the total number of Firefox users on Metro. Though that's unfathomably low.
I've heard that Metro makes it difficult to choose an alternate browser. If so, then virtually everybody will stick with Exploder.
I know. You want to know what REALLY infuriated me recently? I work in a hospital, and we have to still use Internet Explorer 7 enterprise wide, because we have system critical systems that have not been validated to work with IE-8 and up. You install it and have a problem, the vendor refuses to help and tells you to downgrade. So here we are, really far off the mark. Same with OS...we have to stay on XP for much the same reasons, though we are agressively trying to move to Windows 7 (pretty much because we have to)
But here is what burned me. I had to look up a solution to a Microsoft problem, using their OWN help, which steers you in 2010 to their OWN website, and...it refused to let me enter the site unless I upgraded from IE7.
Unbelievable.
Sure, I could get Chrome or Mozilla, but...IE7 on their own website is refused?
I was hyperventilating. Sometimes I detest Microsoft.
I was surprised, because I use that a lot. Ah, well...this is progress!
!Forward!
Seriously, MS help hasn't been as much as doing a web search and picking answers of a forum somewhere.
I;m still running XP because I have a half dozen machines which run it, they do the work I need done, and I don't have time to reinvent the wheel.Eventually I will have to "upgrade", but if I had a choice I'd just stick with the devil I know.
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