Firefox 28 released: Windows 8 Metro version removed at the last moment because it only had 1,000 users

Firefox 28 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android has been released. For Android, version 28 adds a lot of cool features  – such as predictive lookup from the address (Awesome) bar, the addition of quick share buttons, and support for OpenSearch. On the desktop side of the equation, though, Firefox 28 adds support for the VP9 video codec… and that’s about it. Why I hear you ask? Well, Firefox 28 was meant to include the long-awaited Windows 8 Metro version of the browser — but at the last minute, citing almost zero demand for Windows 8′s Metro interface, Mozilla’s vice president for Firefox decided to terminate the project and pull the code out of version 28.

Speaking on Mozilla’s official Firefox Beta blog, vice president Jonathan Nightingale paints a stark picture of Microsoft’s touch-oriented Metro interface. Back in 2012, when the Firefox for Metro team was formed, Nightingale — like Microsoft — really did think that the Metro interface would be “the next battleground for the Web. Windows is a massive ecosystem and Microsoft pushes its new platforms hard.” In Nightingale’s defense, I think we all thought that the Metro interface would at least experience some measure of success. I don’t think anyone predicted that Windows 8′s touch interface would tank as hard as it has done.

Firefox for Windows 8, Metro version. This is what it would’ve looked like, if it hadn’t been pulled. [Image credit: Softpedia]

Anyway, after a lot of hard work, Firefox for Windows 8 Touch was eventually released to the alpha and beta testing public. To help with the testing process, Mozilla tracks the usage of its alpha and beta browsers — and, in the case of Metro, the usage statistics were very bad indeed:

“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. On any given day we have, for instance, millions of people testing pre-release versions of Firefox desktop, but we’ve never seen more than 1000 active daily users in the Metro environment.”

As a result, Mozilla was faced with a hard decision: Ship the Metro version of Firefox, knowing that it hadn’t been appropriately beta tested and was probably still full of bugs… or just pull it completely. There was another option — to continue developing and testing it for future release — but, given how few people are interested in the Metro version, Mozilla decided to focus its efforts on other areas. “If we release a product, we maintain it through end of life. When I talk about the need to pick our battles, this feels like a bad one to pick: significant investment and low impact.”

The Metro version of Chrome looks more like Chrome OS than anything else

Nightingale admits that Firefox now runs the risk of being caught with its pants down if Metro suddenly becomes very popular (Chrome has had a stable Metro version since January) — but honestly, I think at this point we can all agree that any gains made by Metro will come as a result of painstakingly small victories won by Microsoft over a scale of months and years, not days and weeks.

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