Update on Metro

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/03/14/metro/

by KwanEsq • 12 years ago

238 80 12 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

yaur• 12 years ago

Seems like a good idea. I'm using windows 8.1 at work and home and the only time I use metro "apps" is when I have a file association that needs to be updated to use a desktop app.

devx• 12 years ago

Designing for Metro was a waste of time from the beginning.

velikos• 12 years ago

Ouch

RyanZAG• 12 years ago

Here's hoping more developers follow suite and Microsoft is eventually forced to drop this whole failed experiment. The changes coming to Win8.1 and the terrible sales figures as people stick to Win7 are hopefully very good indicators that this will happen - and then the rest of us can get back to actually using an OS and not fighting it.

yuhong• 12 years ago

I wouldn't drop Metro completely, but I'd offer a start menu as an option.

yulaow• 12 years ago

I would prefere to keep metro as the more "consumer friendly" ui solution and then REALLY improve the desktop so it can fight evenly with the linux ones and become really the place for us "pro" user who need to get shits done

codeulike2• 12 years ago

Metro is going to work out well eventually, maybe in Windows 9. Microsoft are playing for the long term here. When you use it on a touchscreen it really makes sense, and one day all screens will be touchscreens.

Nursie• 12 years ago

They may all get the capability but I don't believe for a second it will be the preferred input mode for workstation type activities.

bambax• 12 years ago

Yes all screens will eventually be touch screens, but as Nursie said below, touch will probably never be the primary input medium for any productivity task.

For one, it's much too slow because you have to cover the whole screen to interact with it. The mouse operates on a translation of the screen that is much smaller, making moves much faster.

For two, I sit over a meter and a half from my screen and couldn't touch it without standing up.

bri3d3• 12 years ago

Their cited use metrics seem a bit bizarre. I had absolutely no idea Firefox for Metro existed and would gladly have tried out a prerelease build if I had any idea it were available.

I certainly don't disagree with the idea, though. Mozilla have limited resource and by almost all accounts the Windows tile UI isn't being adopted rapidly or willingly.

MekaiGS2• 12 years ago

Err it's pretty obvious, when you click on the menu there is a giant button that says Windows 8 Mode on it.

bri3d3• 12 years ago

Two things:

1) I didn't even bother to install Firefox on my Windows 8 tablet because I didn't know about this feature; had I known, I would have.

2) http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-launch-firefox-... seems a far cry from a "giant button" - not only do I rarely if ever use that menu (because keyboard shortcuts) but I doubt I'd have picked up on that option unless I were looking for it.

userbinator• 12 years ago

Mozilla have limited resource

...which they have spent a lot of on needlessly changing the UI, so at least refusing to do it this time is a welcome change in direction.

mbrubeck7• 12 years ago

Hi, I'm one of the developers who built Firefox for Metro.

It's true, we don't know what the usage would have been like if we did some real marketing of the Metro feature. We briefly had a "what's new" page that promoted Metro for users of Firefox Aurora on Windows 8, but we never did a similar promotion on the larger Firefox Beta channel. We had another in-product promotion planned for after the release of Firefox 28, but that's no longer in the cards.

In the absence of that, we have to rely on metrics from desktop Firefox (e.g. what portion of our users are running it on the touch hardware that our Metro app was designed for) and on any data we can get about the PC industry as a whole.

I'm torn about this decision (understandably, I think), and I still think that Microsoft has a good chance of eventually building a much larger user base for its touch platforms. But the improvements we wanted to make to the Metro browser (like making the scrolling as smooth as possible) would have required ongoing work not just from my team but from other groups like the graphics and layout teams, whose energy may be better used on other platforms (desktop, Android, Firefox OS). So we had to think strategically about what's right for us to ship this year.

RyJones• 12 years ago

I work on an open-source project and we just dropped Metro/RT support for the last release, after man years of effort. The adoption didn't justify the effort.

https://git.allseenalliance.org/gerrit/#/c/528/

bri3d3• 12 years ago

I agree with all of your points, thanks for chiming in.

It just seems odd to me that the article cites Metro's adoption as "flat" based on "less than 1000" daily Metro users versus "millions" of prerelease Firefox users when the product wasn't marketed or widely available - the comparison is so unfair that that particular data feels like fluff.

It sounds like the actual decision to pull the plug was made using both a critical eye on the market and much better data than the anecdote from the article would lead one to believe.

nsxwolf• 12 years ago

Why do you still call it "Metro"?

polshaw3• 12 years ago

It strikes me that-- if you accept that touch screens are not going away, and nor is windows-- then the work on providing smooth scrolling is unavoidable, metro or otherwise. Would there be a large amount of work on smooth scrolling for metro that would not carry over to 'desktop' windows 8 firefox?

teamonkey• 12 years ago

When I saw this I thought I had missed something really important on the Windows store. I don't recall seeing it...

Wait. You have to install the desktop version to get it to work in Metro? What? No, don't make me do that. No wonder no-one used it.

mbrubeck7• 12 years ago

First, note that the project was cancelled before the first version shipped. This would have changed if it had made it all the way to release.

Second, some details about the store... "Windows Store apps" can use the IE rendering engine to browse the web, but can't use other existing libraries like Gecko or Blink. "Metro-enabled desktop browsers" like Firefox and Chrome and IE (the terminology comes from an old Microsoft white paper [1]) can take advantage of a special exception to the restrictions placed on most "Metro" apps, but only if they are set as the default browser for both desktop and Metro mode. And they can't be installed like Windows Store apps; you have to install them through the desktop.

Metro-enabled desktop browsers (like other desktop apps) can be listed in the Windows Store, but can't be installed there. Instead, the Windows Store page will just contain a link an installer on the developer's web site. Chrome links to their installer from the Windows Store, and we'd have done the same if we shipped the Metro app in a Firefox release. (We could still list desktop Firefox in the Windows Store, subject to the same restrictions.)

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/firefox-for-windows-8-adds-a-touch-of-m...

AaronFriel3• 12 years ago

This is an understandable decision from Firefox's perspective. Windows 8/8.1 are okay on tablets, but if the interface and implementation requires a lot of polish, they need the user base to get it there.

I think one problem with Metro adoption has actually been the way one browser vendor in particular treated its users. I'm talking, of course, of Google Chrome. For a long period of time, reinstalling Chrome meant getting dropped into a hideous, single-window "Metro" implementation that offered none of the benefits of the environment, and every downside. I would prefer to use IE in full screen mode over "Chrome in Windows 8 Mode" and that's saying something.

Now Google's "Windows 8 Mode" is essentially a ChromeOS implementation in Windows, which I sort of think is cool, and mostly think is just perplexing for users.

I wonder why no one - Mozilla, Google, Opera - has implemented exactly what IE does. A very simple interface with not a lot of bells and whistles, an address bar, a tab picker, and a full screen browser. Maybe it's because Google Chrome doesn't seem to work well with multitouch - support seems to be based on the whims of the version number - and Mozilla's engine similarly seems to have interactivity issues.

As a result, I get the feeling when using these browsers on a Surface Pro that no one at Google or Mozilla is too. For over a year, pinch to zoom and other multi-touch gestures didn't work on Chrome. Or they would on Canary or Dev, but only for a few weeks, before suddenly not working again. Pinch to zoom is abhorrent on Firefox - a clunky experience that makes me regret doing it every time. And scrolling requires two fingers on Firefox - or at least it does in Nightly now - and so for the longest time I thought it didn't work at all. I don't know why they've decided their browser is the only one that needs two fingers to scroll. Chrome works terribly on a mid to high DPI display. I can't for the life of me close a tab.

The result is clunky. Users don't want clunky things. Chrome defaulting to Metro mode for Windows 8 users during a period when the browser barely or intermittently supported touch leaves me with only foul things to say to a Chrome dev or their program manager if I ever meet one. Likewise, I can't understand why Firefox is making Firefox in Metro a major project - give me a full screen interface to Gecko with a big address bar at the top or bottom and let me use that.

EDIT: WHOA! Firefox Nightly's (30.x) Windows 8 mode is actually decent. Pinching to zoom doesn't inflict masochistic terrors on me, and one finger is all that's necessary to scroll. When did this happen and why doesn't someone tell people about it?

fournm2• 12 years ago

From my experience it's been the same in Aurora 28/29--at least for the scrolling, I can't recall ever having pinch to zoom issues.

AaronFriel3• 12 years ago

In desktop mode it's horrible - a positively un-fun experience that makes me regret doing it. Are you referring to the Windows 8 mode?

mbrubeck7• 12 years ago

Firefox for Metro was pretty much what you described -- at least, that was our goal. It has a very simple UI, which is very similar in spirit to IE11 for Metro.

However, this meant adding entire new input/graphics/widget backends to the Gecko platform using a combination of WinRT and Win32 APIs, and a long slog to get those stable and responsive enough to ship to millions of users. And designing and build a new UI (even a minimal one) means we don't get existing desktop Firefox features "for free" -- stuff like private browsing, add-ons, bookmarking, password management, sync...

Even minimal browsers have a surprisingly large surface area if you want them to be usable for daily browsing. We cut out a lot of that stuff for the first release, but that also means we had a long road ahead toward a feature set that was competitive with other browsers (including desktop Firefox, or Firefox for Android). And that's not even getting into technical issues with the Metro environment, like the inability to run the NPAPI version of Flash Player...

Just as one example: When writing a browser, you need to do your own text rendering and layout. That means you can't rely on the OS to handle things like select/copy/paste. So you end up implementing your own touch-friendly selection UI, and making it match the OS behavior as much as possible. This turns out to be a minefield of subtleties and edge cases.

AaronFriel3• 12 years ago

I've played with the Firefox Metro UI for about half an hour now - obviously since my post - and I really like it. It's a solid start.

Is it possible that the reason you're seeing low use is because users aren't aware the option exists? Also, why are features in Firefox Metro not ported to Desktop? Touch zoom and scroll for example, are vastly superior in Windows 8 Mode right now.

donrhummy2• 12 years ago

I used it and submitted bug reports to help the team find issues. I hate Windows but am forced to use it in certain cases. While Windows 8 touch is not huge, I would prefer to have options other than IE for myself and other users.

codeulike2• 12 years ago

If Firefox Windows 8 mode a different thing to Firefox for Metro?

zobzu2• 12 years ago

im using ff metro ui in ff nightly and its like IE except its firefox. too bad its going away, its pretty good.

iriche• 12 years ago

The Metro mode is awesome on my Surface - but thats about it...

liminal• 12 years ago

I'd love to see a touch-optimized mode in their desktop browser interface to use on my touchscreen laptop.

fournm2• 12 years ago

That's actually kind of disappointing. It was nice to use it on my underpowered laptop, and it tended to work fine.

I can't imagine the intersection of "people who use Aurora" and "people who use Windows 8.1" and "people who will set their default browser to Metro mode and then use something else in desktop mode" was ever that great to begin with, though (myself and... maybe 2 others?) so I can't really say I'm surprised.

sokrates• 12 years ago

In the months since, as the team built and tested and refined the product, we’ve been watching Metro’s adoption. From what we can see, it’s pretty flat.

Cue rimshot.

polshaw3• 12 years ago

If you don't care about touch, then frankly you won't care about this announcement. I think this is the perspective of most posters here. But as someone that wanted a better touch-optimised full-fat browser, I am very disappointed.

Metro is all about touch, and the problem with Firefox in that context is that its touch performance sucks-- zoom is irresponsive and stepped, and scrolling performance is sub-par too; IE on the other hand excels at both of these-- which is why I use IE-metro in touch scenarios despite having a strong preference for Firefox normally.

If Mozilla fixed these core issues (which I should note are 'solved' on their android browser, and I believe are important anyway for their desktop mode), then I think they would have had a lot more interest in using Firefox in metro mode.. which is essentially what I have always wanted when using tablet-style, but have been waiting it out until they had something usable. I think their 'marketing' has been really poor too.. I can't say I really had any idea there was a metro mode to the existing Firefox.. why didn't they try giving some kind of notification to windows8 users who had touch screens? And, personally (perhaps naively?), I just don't see that Mozilla don't have enough resources to handle this alongside existing projects, dumping it seems very short-sighted to me. Regardless, a big set back for those looking for a great full-fat browser experience with a touch-focused UI.

banachtarski2• 12 years ago

You should qualify the "care about touch" phrase to be "care about touch on windows."

People have been using touch browsers on ipads and iphones and androids for years now. Windows mobile and tablet market share is just astronomically small compared to everything else. If you're a metro user, I honestly feel bad for you.

polshaw3• 12 years ago

Perhaps your correction is valid, but your scoffing at windows (touch) users is very short-sighted. There is no mobile browser that lives up to the promise of a properly optimised full Firefox on windows. Frankly, I would say IE on metro is already better than any of them.

mbrubeck7• 12 years ago

We did do things like pop up a notification about the Metro app to Windows 8 users on our pre-release channels, though I wish we'd done more:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=918107

the_unknown• 12 years ago

Unfortunate. I use Windows 8.1 every day as my main OS on both a traditional desktop and on a Surface RT. I had no idea that Firefox had a Metro version available. And I happen to use Firefox as my main browser on my desktop.

I would have loved for a notice to appear when starting it up one day to say "Hey, we see you use Windows 8 - did you know there's a Metro option available? Find out More or Never bother me again."

mbrubeck7• 12 years ago

Note that browsers like Chrome and Firefox aren't allowed on Windows RT. Browsers for Windows RT can use IE's rendering and JS engine, but other existing engines won't work within the restricted "Windows Store app" environment.

Windows 8 has a special exception to these restrictions. This exception is available only to the app you choose as your default web browser, to prevent other apps from using it. And it's available only on Windows 8 for x86 hardware, since Microsoft claims that's sufficient to satisfy the terms of their 2001 anti-trust settlement with the US DOJ.

rblatz2• 12 years ago

This is disappointing, I've been looking into touch interfaces for kiosks. Currently the best option for us is using IE on Windows 8.1.

OS X isn't really built for touch, and the browsing experience isn't that great on it with a touch screen.

Chrome and FF in desktop mode doesn't deliver the visual cues that the pages are loading the same way IE does. Which I didn't even realize until I got my hands on it. For some reason people (read me and everyone that has tested it) feel like a response should be instant when you click a link on a giant touch screen. IE does a great job of popping up UI to communicate that it is working. Chrome just sets the tab's favicon to a spinner.

r00fus• 12 years ago

Why not just use an iPad or Android tablet (Galaxy Tab 12.2)?

rblatz2• 12 years ago

We are thinking of a much larger touch screen than a tablet.

Romoku• 12 years ago

I've been looking to abandon Chrome and I would definitely give Metro Firefox a try on my desktop. I enjoy the metro split screen with the Windows 8 Store Twitter client (it's awesome to get push notifications). If I had a nice browser for metro then I would definitely try to migrate.

orky562• 12 years ago

This type of news really breaks my heart. I'm part of a team developing a Windows 8 app for Metro. On the one hand, we have faced lots of challenges (8.1 isn't compatible with 8!) and understand the issues regarding adoption. However, we still continue to believe that the Metro experience is a great concept and apps like ours have a chance to significantly turn the tide on its reputation. It's really a free-for-all where whoever creates the strongest end-user experience can really own that category on Windows 8. That brand/product recognition can follow to a user's other devices whether it phone/tablet/laptop.

isaacwaller• 12 years ago

What is your app?

orky562• 12 years ago

Still unannounced but happy to share details privately.

tomp2• 12 years ago

Meta comment: That is how titles should be on HN. Metro or Update on Metro would not tell us much, but with a short description in [brackets] it's much more relevant.

NoodleIncident• 12 years ago

Were the brackets added or endorsed by a mod, or are they just overlooking the OP not strictly following the rules?

I think that the policy of sticking strictly to the article title is usually a good one, but being able to contextualize in brackets like this without mods cracking down on it would be an improvement, I think.

rlpb• 12 years ago

The title is now "Update on Metro".

tomp2• 12 years ago

It was "Metro [Mozilla decides to not ship Firefox of Metro]" or something similar...

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

My understanding is that we can expect Metro on desktop to be a non-existent feature in Windows 9 onwards if rumours and screenshots are to be believed. The tiled interface works brilliantly on a Surface tablet and is definitely way more user friendly than iOS' interface, however on desktop it makes no sense.

I'm sure there will be few tears over this decision to cancel Firefox for Metro.

zobzu2• 12 years ago

I command this VP for also actually saying "it dead jim" when it is - unlike the "its going to community-mode". I think its a much nicer, transparent communication from mozilla and exactly what i expect from mozilla, too. Props!

sirkneeland• 12 years ago

I assume you meant "commend"...because "command" would be a bit aggressive ;)

crag2• 12 years ago

Windows 8 is fine if you take away Metro. First app I installed was a "Start menu" app. I use Start8 from Stardoc.

I don't blame Mozilla for not supporting Metro. And just to point out, Firefox runs fine on the Windows 8 Desktop.

runner84111• 12 years ago

Well Metro is great for tablets, or even laptops if you have a decent touch-pad.. That said, I don't think every software needs to support Metro since it seems to be geared more for casual use programs.

crag2• 12 years ago

Oh of course. I didn't mean to suggest Metro wasn't great for tablets and phones. Funny, I came "this close" to buying a Windows Phone - but I didn't know anyone at the office, or personally who had one. So I stuck with the iPhone.

I liked Metro (on the phone) better then iOS. I like the tiles. I wish more people would buy the damn thing. ;)

And that does bring up something I've been wondering about: why aren't more people buying Windows Phone and Tablets? Is it an image problem? Or was MS just too late to the party?

SunboX• 12 years ago

So how about Firefox for Windows Phone 8?

chris_wot• 12 years ago

Ouch. Turns out, the thing that has hurt Metro is the lack of competition. If Firefox don't think it's a threat, then they've looked at the awful market share of the platform and realized it's not something to put resources into.

Update on Metro

Related Stories