We hope you weren’t eagerly anticipating a finished release of Firefox for Windows 8 — despite releasing a beta of the browser just last month, Mozilla has cancelled the project. There just aren’t enough testers using the new interface to justify shipping a completed version, the developer says.
It’s concerned that the missing feedback could lead to a buggy release that requires too much repair work. Pre-release code will still be available, and Mozilla isn’t ruling out a change of heart in the future. For now, though, Windows 8 users will have to switch to a rival like Chrome if they want a touch-friendly alternative to Internet Explorer.
Mozilla attributed the death of Firefox for Windows 8 to low adoption, but it didn’t say why people weren’t using the beta release. Were they not interested?
Former Mozilla developer Brian Bondy doesn’t think so. Instead, he believes that Microsoft’s strict web browser rules are to blame. You can’t run a browser in the modern Windows interface unless it’s set as the default, and picking that default is a drawn-out process — some people didn’t know that they could use Firefox in the newer environment, Bondy says.
Whether or not the OS policy is responsible, we wouldn’t expect Microsoft to be more accommodating when Mozilla has complained to little avail for the past two years.
Source: Engadget
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