A while back we mentioned that Firefox was working on getting a Windows 8 Metro Modern User Interface prototype going. There are some ‘internal builds’ that have been completed, but so far no Alpha or Beta release. This topic came up on Sunday in the Firefox Build forums today as a beta users was looking for the Windows 8 builds of Firefox and then also trying to get the Windows 8 Metro Modern UI of IE10 working. Turns out in Windows 8 you can only have one browser using the Modern UI in Windows 8. Further, this browser needs to be your ‘default’ browser (via the Programs and Settings control panel page) in order to use the Modern UI.
Keep in mind we are still two months away from the official release of Windows 8 on October 26th, so there is still time for Mozilla to start putting out Alpha (Aurora) and Beta builds. While the Firefox Roadmap does show the ‘Proof of Concept’ planned for the 2012 Q2 (2nd Quarter) as ‘DONE’, the 2H (second half) for Alpha and Beta of Firefox for Windows 8 Metro is not ‘DONE’ or even ‘Partial’. Also during this next two months Microsoft could change the name of the interface formerly known as ‘Metro’ to something else yet again (was Windows 8 User Interface prior to the current Modern User Interface).
I have had some readers asking if I will be testing Firefox on Windows 8. At the present time I am not, though I did get an offer for a free (after mail-in rebate) upgrade to Windows 8 when I purchased my new laptop for school. I’ll have to look at the details of this offer and see if allows for me to do the upgrade on any machine running Windows 7 as I do have a project computer I could try it out on.
