Summary: Mozilla today announced that it has begun “a very large project” to build a Metro styled version of Firefox for Windows 8. Can Firefox for Metro really be ready this summer?
Mozilla’s Brian R. Bondy revealed today that development has begun on Firefox for Metro.
Last month, Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler announced that a Metro version of Firefox was in early planning stages, with a blog post about Mozilla’s goals that in turn linked to a roadmap. Dotzler is listed as the product manager.
Today’s announcement fleshes out some of the key decisions that the Mozilla team has made in the past month.
According to Bondy, Firefox for Metro will mimic Internet Explorer 10’s split personality, as a “Metro style enabled desktop browser”:
Unlike Metro applications, Metro style enabled desktop browsers have the ability to run outside of the Metro sandbox. Meaning not only can we build a browser, but we can build a powerful browser which gives an experience equal to that of a classic Desktop browser.
Metro style enabled desktop browsers have access to most Win32 API and the entire new WinRT API.
Unfortunately a browser can only participate in Metro mode if it is the default browser. So if Firefox is not the default browser on a system, you can’t use it in Metro mode. This is a decision made by Microsoft. More
