Mozilla: Prototype Firefox Metro Browser For Windows 8
Mozilla has been working hard to develop a Windows 8 Metro version of the Firefox browser and they have finally got a working prototype that they are showing off.
Metro Style Browser From Mozilla Has Reached Prototype Stage
Mozilla has arrived at the prototype milestone with their Metro style browser, which is essentially a version of Firefox meant for the Metro UI on Windows 8. Whilst they are showing off the current version of the browser that started development just over a month back, they admit that there are still design questions that have not been answered yet. The UI will be changing, Mozilla’s Brian R. Bondy said. He also said that this is a working prototype, which means the development work is in fact going at quite a fast rate.
One way the team accelerated the design was by implementing the existing Fennec version of Firefox. Fennec is the mobile version of FireFox and the team reports that it “just worked” on Windows 8, which surprised them because the same code base gave significant problems when they tried to run it on Android.
Fennec on Windows 8 already has a lot of the Windows 8 features in place. It features support for Metro Snap, HTML file picker and also the Windows 8 Search contract that allows it to work in tandem with other apps that have the contract in place, such as the Windows Search Box.
There’s also support for the share contract, which means a page or content in the browser can be shared with the rest of the Metro apps. So you can already mail, Facebook and Twitter a page that you are on without having to go through cut, copy and paste options.
Given the pace of development, Metro version of Firefox for Windows 8 should be ready by the time Windows 8 is commercially released. Or may be even by May-June when the Release Candidate build is supposed to be happening.
