
Update on Metro - KwanEsq
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/03/14/metro/
======
polshaw
If you don't care about touch, then frankly you won't care about this
announcement. I think this is the perspective of most posters here. But as
someone that wanted a better touch-optimised full-fat browser, I am very
disappointed.

Metro is all about touch, and the problem with Firefox in that context is that
its touch performance sucks-- zoom is irresponsive and stepped, and scrolling
performance is sub-par too; IE on the other hand excels at both of these--
which is why I use IE-metro in touch scenarios despite having a strong
preference for Firefox normally.

If Mozilla fixed these core issues (which I should note are 'solved' on their
android browser, and I believe are important anyway for their desktop mode),
then I think they would have had a lot more interest in using Firefox in metro
mode.. which is essentially what I have always wanted when using tablet-style,
but have been waiting it out until they had something usable. I think their
'marketing' has been really poor too.. I can't say I really had any idea there
_was_ a metro mode to the existing Firefox.. why didn't they try giving some
kind of notification to windows8 users who had touch screens? And, personally
(perhaps naively?), I just don't see that Mozilla don't have enough resources
to handle this alongside existing projects, dumping it seems very short-
sighted to me. Regardless, a big set back for those looking for a great full-
fat browser experience with a touch-focused UI.

~~~
banachtarski
You should qualify the "care about touch" phrase to be "care about touch on
windows."

People have been using touch browsers on ipads and iphones and androids for
years now. Windows mobile and tablet market share is just astronomically small
compared to everything else. If you're a metro user, I honestly feel bad for
you.

~~~
polshaw
Perhaps your correction is valid, but your scoffing at windows (touch) users
is very short-sighted. There is no mobile browser that lives up to the promise
of a properly optimised _full_ Firefox on windows. Frankly, I would say IE on
metro is already better than any of them.

~~~
banachtarski
Well yea and nobody would want that. The touch interface necessarily limits
the amount of functionality you can bolt in without excessive UI overloading.

> Frankly, I would say IE on metro is already better than any of them.

Care to qualify this? Chrome on ios for example is fantastic.

------
bri3d
Their cited use metrics seem a bit bizarre. I had absolutely no idea Firefox
for Metro existed and would gladly have tried out a prerelease build if I had
any idea it were available.

I certainly don't disagree with the idea, though. Mozilla have limited
resource and by almost all accounts the Windows tile UI isn't being adopted
rapidly or willingly.

~~~
mbrubeck
Hi, I'm one of the developers who built Firefox for Metro.

It's true, we don't know what the usage would have been like if we did some
real marketing of the Metro feature. We briefly had a "what's new" page that
promoted Metro for users of Firefox Aurora on Windows 8, but we never did a
similar promotion on the larger Firefox Beta channel. We had another in-
product promotion planned for after the release of Firefox 28, but that's no
longer in the cards.

In the absence of that, we have to rely on metrics from desktop Firefox (e.g.
what portion of our users are running it on the touch hardware that our Metro
app was designed for) and on any data we can get about the PC industry as a
whole.

I'm torn about this decision (understandably, I think), and I still think that
Microsoft has a good chance of eventually building a much larger user base for
its touch platforms. But the improvements we wanted to make to the Metro
browser (like making the scrolling as smooth as possible) would have required
ongoing work not just from my team but from other groups like the graphics and
layout teams, whose energy may be better used on other platforms (desktop,
Android, Firefox OS). So we had to think strategically about what's right for
us to ship this year.

~~~
nsxwolf
Why do you still call it "Metro"?

~~~
mbrubeck
We used "Firefox for Metro" only as a code name for the project; it doesn't
appear in user-facing strings in the product.

We've been using that project name for a couple of years, and haven't seen a
good reason to change. Microsoft hasn't settled on a useable replacement. For
a while they used "Modern style" but now they've dropped that too. Now they
mostly use "Windows Store app" in their developer documentation, but we found
that too confusing, especially since Metro-enabled desktop browsers like
Firefox and Chrome aren't necessarily installed through the Windows Store.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft white paper on _" Developing a Metro-enabled desktop
browser"_ was retitled _" Developing a new experience enabled desktop
browser"_ [1], which is even less... wieldy.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windows/apps/hh46541...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/windows/apps/hh465413.aspx)

------
orky56
This type of news really breaks my heart. I'm part of a team developing a
Windows 8 app for Metro. On the one hand, we have faced lots of challenges
(8.1 isn't compatible with 8!) and understand the issues regarding adoption.
However, we still continue to believe that the Metro experience is a great
concept and apps like ours have a chance to significantly turn the tide on its
reputation. It's really a free-for-all where whoever creates the strongest
end-user experience can really own that category on Windows 8. That
brand/product recognition can follow to a user's other devices whether it
phone/tablet/laptop.

~~~
isaacwaller
What is your app?

~~~
orky56
Still unannounced but happy to share details privately.

------
fournm
That's actually kind of disappointing. It was nice to use it on my
underpowered laptop, and it tended to work fine.

I can't imagine the intersection of "people who use Aurora" and "people who
use Windows 8.1" and "people who will set their default browser to Metro mode
and then use something else in desktop mode" was ever that great to begin
with, though (myself and... maybe 2 others?) so I can't really say I'm
surprised.

------
AaronFriel
This is an understandable decision from Firefox's perspective. Windows 8/8.1
are okay on tablets, but if the interface and implementation requires a lot of
polish, they need the user base to get it there.

I think one problem with Metro adoption has actually been the way one browser
vendor in particular treated its users. I'm talking, of course, of Google
Chrome. For a long period of time, reinstalling Chrome meant getting dropped
into a hideous, single-window "Metro" implementation that offered none of the
benefits of the environment, and every downside. I would prefer to use IE in
full screen mode over "Chrome in Windows 8 Mode" and that's saying something.

Now Google's "Windows 8 Mode" is essentially a ChromeOS implementation in
Windows, which I sort of think is cool, and mostly think is just perplexing
for users.

I wonder why no one - Mozilla, Google, Opera - has implemented exactly what IE
does. A very simple interface with not a lot of bells and whistles, an address
bar, a tab picker, and a full screen browser. Maybe it's because Google Chrome
doesn't seem to work well with multitouch - support seems to be based on the
whims of the version number - and Mozilla's engine similarly seems to have
interactivity issues.

As a result, I get the feeling when using these browsers on a Surface Pro that
no one at Google or Mozilla is too. For over a year, pinch to zoom and other
multi-touch gestures didn't work on Chrome. Or they would on Canary or Dev,
but only for a few weeks, before suddenly not working again. Pinch to zoom is
abhorrent on Firefox - a clunky experience that makes me regret doing it every
time. And scrolling requires two fingers on Firefox - or at least it does in
Nightly now - and so for the longest time I thought it didn't work at all. I
don't know why they've decided their browser is the only one that needs two
fingers to scroll. Chrome works terribly on a mid to high DPI display. I can't
for the life of me close a tab.

The result is clunky. Users don't want clunky things. Chrome defaulting to
Metro mode for Windows 8 users during a period when the browser barely or
intermittently supported touch leaves me with only foul things to say to a
Chrome dev or their program manager if I ever meet one. Likewise, I can't
understand why Firefox is making Firefox in Metro a major project - give me a
full screen interface to Gecko with a big address bar at the top or bottom and
let me use that.

EDIT: WHOA! Firefox Nightly's (30.x) Windows 8 mode is actually decent.
Pinching to zoom doesn't inflict masochistic terrors on me, and one finger is
all that's necessary to scroll. When did this happen and why doesn't someone
tell people about it?

~~~
mbrubeck
Firefox for Metro was pretty much what you described -- at least, that was our
goal. It has a very simple UI, which is very similar in spirit to IE11 for
Metro.

However, this meant adding entire new input/graphics/widget backends to the
Gecko platform using a combination of WinRT and Win32 APIs, and a long slog to
get those stable and responsive enough to ship to millions of users. And
designing and build a new UI (even a minimal one) means we don't get existing
desktop Firefox features "for free" \-- stuff like private browsing, add-ons,
bookmarking, password management, sync...

Even minimal browsers have a surprisingly large surface area if you want them
to be usable for daily browsing. We cut out a lot of that stuff for the first
release, but that also means we had a long road ahead toward a feature set
that was competitive with other browsers (including desktop Firefox, or
Firefox for Android). And that's not even getting into technical issues with
the Metro environment, like the inability to run the NPAPI version of Flash
Player...

Just as one example: When writing a browser, you need to do your own text
rendering and layout. That means you can't rely on the OS to handle things
like select/copy/paste. So you end up implementing your own touch-friendly
selection UI, and making it match the OS behavior as much as possible. This
turns out to be a minefield of subtleties and edge cases.

~~~
AaronFriel
I've played with the Firefox Metro UI for about half an hour now - obviously
since my post - and I really like it. It's a solid start.

Is it possible that the reason you're seeing low use is because users aren't
aware the option exists? Also, why are features in Firefox Metro not ported to
Desktop? Touch zoom and scroll for example, are vastly superior in Windows 8
Mode right now.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It's likely that a combination of these:

1\. Low percentage of Windows 8/8.1 users among Firefox testers

2\. Low percentage of Windows 8/8.1 users among Firefox developers

3\. Low usage of the Windows Metro/Modern UI (I don't know anyone that uses it
on a desktop or laptop besides playing solitaire)

4\. Low adoption of Windows RT tablets/convertibles (these are the ones that
are forced to use a Metro/Modern browser)

~~~
makosdv
The first thing I did after getting Windows 8/8.1 on my new laptop was to
install StartIsBack and disable all the Metro/Modern UI stuff. I find it very
annoying (especially in a non-touch environment).

I'm fine with Mozilla focusing on Firefox for Desktop and Android. I'm a big
user of both.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Yeah. Firefox on desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows), Firefox for Android, and
Firefox OS (for that mobile phone competition angle). No need for Firefox on
Metro right now (hardly any users and the ones there are don't know what
different browsers are anyway) or Firefox on iOS (since it would just be a UI
skin over the gimped version of Mobile Safari thanks to Apple's anti-
competitive rules).

------
tomp
Meta comment: That is how titles should be on HN. _Metro_ or _Update on Metro_
would not tell us much, but with a short description in [brackets] it's much
more relevant.

~~~
rlpb
The title is now "Update on Metro".

~~~
tomp
It was "Metro [Mozilla decides to not ship Firefox of Metro]" or something
similar...

------
the_unknown
Unfortunate. I use Windows 8.1 every day as my main OS on both a traditional
desktop and on a Surface RT. I had no idea that Firefox had a Metro version
available. And I happen to use Firefox as my main browser on my desktop.

I would have loved for a notice to appear when starting it up one day to say
"Hey, we see you use Windows 8 - did you know there's a Metro option
available? Find out More or Never bother me again."

~~~
mbrubeck
Note that browsers like Chrome and Firefox aren't allowed on Windows RT.
Browsers for Windows RT can use IE's rendering and JS engine, but other
existing engines won't work within the restricted "Windows Store app"
environment.

Windows 8 has a special exception to these restrictions. This exception is
available only to the app you choose as your default web browser, to prevent
other apps from using it. And it's available only on Windows 8 for x86
hardware, since Microsoft claims that's sufficient to satisfy the terms of
their 2001 anti-trust settlement with the US DOJ.

------
rblatz
This is disappointing, I've been looking into touch interfaces for kiosks.
Currently the best option for us is using IE on Windows 8.1.

OS X isn't really built for touch, and the browsing experience isn't that
great on it with a touch screen.

Chrome and FF in desktop mode doesn't deliver the visual cues that the pages
are loading the same way IE does. Which I didn't even realize until I got my
hands on it. For some reason people (read me and everyone that has tested it)
feel like a response should be instant when you click a link on a giant touch
screen. IE does a great job of popping up UI to communicate that it is
working. Chrome just sets the tab's favicon to a spinner.

~~~
r00fus
Why not just use an iPad or Android tablet (Galaxy Tab 12.2)?

~~~
rblatz
We are thinking of a much larger touch screen than a tablet.

~~~
moron4hire
There are some desktop-sized Android machines these days. The one I saw at
Staples wasn't very impressive, but apparently it's possible.

That said, I'm also building a touch app on Windows 8. But it's not consumer-
facing, it's going out to state DOTs. I've stuck to using regular, ol'
WinForms, mostly because I still find it loads easier to actually program than
any of the newer shit MS has floated.

------
RyanZAG
Here's hoping more developers follow suite and Microsoft is eventually forced
to drop this whole failed experiment. The changes coming to Win8.1 and the
terrible sales figures as people stick to Win7 are hopefully very good
indicators that this will happen - and then the rest of us can get back to
actually using an OS and not fighting it.

~~~
codeulike
Metro is going to work out well eventually, maybe in Windows 9. Microsoft are
playing for the long term here. When you use it on a touchscreen it really
makes sense, and one day all screens will be touchscreens.

~~~
bambax
Yes all screens will eventually be touch screens, but as Nursie said below,
touch will probably never be the primary input medium for any productivity
task.

For one, it's much too slow because you have to cover the whole screen to
interact with it. The mouse operates on a translation of the screen that is
much smaller, making moves much faster.

For two, I sit over a meter and a half from my screen and couldn't touch it
without standing up.

------
sokrates
> In the months since, as the team built and tested and refined the product,
> we’ve been watching Metro’s adoption. From what we can see, it’s pretty
> flat.

Cue rimshot.

------
yaur
Seems like a good idea. I'm using windows 8.1 at work and home and the only
time I use metro "apps" is when I have a file association that needs to be
updated to use a desktop app.

------
Romoku
I've been looking to abandon Chrome and I would definitely give Metro Firefox
a try on my desktop. I enjoy the metro split screen with the Windows 8 Store
Twitter client (it's awesome to get push notifications). If I had a nice
browser for metro then I would definitely try to migrate.

------
zobzu
I command this VP for also actually saying "it dead jim" when it is - unlike
the "its going to community-mode". I think its a much nicer, transparent
communication from mozilla and exactly what i expect from mozilla, too. Props!

~~~
sirkneeland
I assume you meant "commend"...because "command" would be a bit aggressive ;)

------
liminal
I'd love to see a touch-optimized mode in their desktop browser interface to
use on my touchscreen laptop.

------
iriche
The Metro mode is awesome on my Surface - but thats about it...

------
DigitalSea
My understanding is that we can expect Metro on desktop to be a non-existent
feature in Windows 9 onwards if rumours and screenshots are to be believed.
The tiled interface works brilliantly on a Surface tablet and is definitely
way more user friendly than iOS' interface, however on desktop it makes no
sense.

I'm sure there will be few tears over this decision to cancel Firefox for
Metro.

------
chris_wot
Ouch. Turns out, the thing that has hurt Metro is the lack of competition. If
Firefox don't think it's a threat, then they've looked at the awful market
share of the platform and realized it's not something to put resources into.

------
crag
Windows 8 is fine if you take away Metro. First app I installed was a "Start
menu" app. I use Start8 from Stardoc.

I don't blame Mozilla for not supporting Metro. And just to point out, Firefox
runs fine on the Windows 8 Desktop.

~~~
runner84111
Well Metro is great for tablets, or even laptops if you have a decent touch-
pad.. That said, I don't think every software needs to support Metro since it
seems to be geared more for casual use programs.

~~~
crag
Oh of course. I didn't mean to suggest Metro wasn't great for tablets and
phones. Funny, I came "this close" to buying a Windows Phone - but I didn't
know anyone at the office, or personally who had one. So I stuck with the
iPhone.

I liked Metro (on the phone) better then iOS. I like the tiles. I wish more
people would buy the damn thing. ;)

And that does bring up something I've been wondering about: why aren't more
people buying Windows Phone and Tablets? Is it an image problem? Or was MS
just too late to the party?

~~~
moron4hire
Why does it matter to have other people share your phone purchase?

~~~
scholia
Because more users attracts more app developers....

~~~
moron4hire
One person could have written all of the apps I use on Android. They aren't
exactly master opuses of software.

------
velikos
Ouch

------
SunboX
So how about Firefox for Windows Phone 8?

------
devx
Designing for Metro was a waste of time from the beginning.

