Mozilla Begins Windows 8 Firefox Development

From PC World: A Mozilla engineer says development of a touch-centric version of Firefox for Windows 8 has begun in earnest and also highlighted a few interesting details about Web browsing in Windows 8.

A proof of concept version of Firefox for Windows 8 is scheduled to be up and running before the summer, and a beta version is scheduled to be ready during the second half of 2012, according to Mozilla's Firefox roadmap.

To be clear, Mozilla doesn't have anything close to a working browser for users to try out yet. Right now, Firefox on Windows 8 is just a basic application that can launch, but doesn't have any actual Web browsing capabilities, according to a blog post by Brian Bondy, a Firefox platform engineer.

Once it's ready, Firefox on Windows 8 will belong to a new class of apps called Metro-style enabled desktop browsers. Basically, this means that you only have to install Firefox once and it will be available as both a desktop and touch-friendly Metro-style app. Bondy believes this will allow Mozilla to offer a powerful Metro version of Firefox that is equal to the "classic Desktop browser."

There is, however, a catch to using Metro-style browsers on Windows 8. You can only use the browser set as your system default for the Metro interface, according to a Microsoft whitepaper (DOCX). Let's say you have Internet Explorer 10 set as your default browser in Windows 8. You can, as always, launch any browser you want using the classic desktop interface in Windows. If you wanted you could even run IE10 and Firefox simultaneously in the Windows 8 desktop. On the Metro side, however, you could only use IE10 to access the web since that is set as your default browser.

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