Firefox Officially Starts Windows 8 Metro Development

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
As promised last month, Mozilla has begun development on a version of its Firefox browser to work with Windows 8 desktop and Metro user interface. The browser will require an enormous amount of new coding and hopefully the project will stay on track to keep pace with the developing Windows 8 operating system.

If Firefox is not selected in Windows 8 to be the default web browser, it can't be used in the Metro UI. This was apparently a decision made by Microsoft, for some unknown reason.
Click to expand...
 
The limitation is probably cause a browser running in winrt can also use win32. So if microsoft didn't have the default browser limitation then other dev could use the browser as a way of making win32 apps in metro.
 
Found it here:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/ne...o-environment.ars?comments=1#comment-22642703
It's Metro-styled, not a Metro app. It's a separate class of applications, specific to web browsers.

You can have "desktop-only" web browser, that is only accessible via the desktop app.

You can have "metro-only" web browser, that is only access via the Metro UI.

And you can have "metro-styled" web browser, that has a desktop UI accessible via the desktop app, and a Metro UI accessible via Metro, both built on the same codebase, with access to Win32 and WinRT.
Click to expand...
 
Neat. Maybe this opening up for applications for Windows 8 means some lessening of the restrictions placed on the Windows Phone marketplace since they'll share a more common NT codebase.

IE9 Mobile is actually pretty damn great, but I would love to have Fennec available on my Windows Phone since it would allow seamless syncing of bookmarks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top