StackOverflowFirefox for Windows 8 Metro - Front end updates, crash reporting, pdfs, and more, status update 6
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Firefox for Windows 8 Metro - Front end updates, crash reporting, pdfs, and more, status update 6
Last modified: Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Work on the Metro style enabled desktop browser has progressed steadily and things are looking really good.
We have a Q3 goal of delivering a Metro preview. This preview will include primary browser UI for navigation and tabs, and will be delivered as a combined classic + metro browser. I believe there is a Q4 goal for a beta release as well.
We made significant progress since the last update, but there is still a lot to do.
In particular we got the following working:
- Crash reporting
- pdfjs (Built in PDF viewer without the need for a plugin)
- Windowless Flash, although full screen flash doesn't work yet
- Some accessibility hooks
- Front end event refactoring to be faster and to treat mouse input normally and distinct from touch input
- File pickers updated to be asynchronous on all platforms because it was needed for WinRT
- Front end awesomescreen work was done with results coming up as you type in the urlbar.
- While in metro, we also have the 'view this page on desktop' functionality working
- Various keyboard shortcuts added
- Various other fixes and refactoring
Add-ons will not be part of the initial release, but we will eventually be supporting Add-ons via the Add-on SDK. These initial limitations are only when in the Metro version of the browser on Windows 8.
We'll have some kind of sync functionality to sync data between your Metro interface and your desktop interface. We're hoping for a local, no setup sync functionality, but at worst it will be done through the current sync functionality.
We haven't merged to mozilla-central yet, which is where Nightly builds will show up. This is mainly because we're waiting on bug 755724 to be complete, which is to split platform and app resources up so that they can be loaded individually.
Tags: firefox windows8 mozilla status-report
Add a new comment | 12 comment(s)
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I believe we are now required by Microsoft to call this the UI formerly known as Metro. ;-) |
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I'll start using another name when they update the MSDN documentation :D |
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Sync? Does this mean that metro and desktop have different profiles? |
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Yes, at least initially there will be 2 profiles and important data will be synchronized across them. |
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What branch is the Metro (née "Windows 8-style UI", or "Modern UI") work currently on? |
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On elm: |
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Will I be able to use Firefox on just a Windows RT tablet with no x86 or x64 support? I hope this is the case as I love Firefox and can't wait to use it on Windows 8! |
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Will it offer an option to get rid of the truly awful pdfjs? I've tried the various solutions on the web and I still can't read PDFs anymore, I have to specifically download them and then launch Foxit Reader. |
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> Will I be able to use Firefox on just I don't think so, but you can get an x86 or x64 based tablet that also has a desktop environment and allows alternate metro browsers. > Will it offer an option to get rid of the I personally love it, but if it's not working right for you, you can turn it off. > I've tried the various solutions on the web You can change the default pdf reader in Firefox options, applications, in the search type pdf. Or I think there is an about:config option to disable it too. |
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I would hate for users to need to set up sync just to use Metro Firefox properly. |
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The old joke runs a Microsoft speakerman gnviig an speech against Mozilla et friends:"You know, these guys just release new and new versions of the software as they write it, waiting for the users to find the bugs and report back to them. On the other hand, we in Microsoft... er... hmm..., yes..., it is an amazing coincidence!." |
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Any news :(? |
