back to article Mozilla to drop Windows 8 Firefox bomb on IE 10

The Mozilla Foundation has started work on a Firefox port that will run in the Windows 8 classic desktop and the tablet-friendly Metro user interfaces. Moz dev Brian Bondy, who described the project in detail on his blog, said the goal is to deliver a single browser capable of straddling the Microsoft operating system's split …

COMMENTS

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  1. The BigYin

    This is easy

    All Moz need to do is have a very simple app that displays a static message like the one below

    "Go get a proper OS"

    1. Geoff May

      Re: This is easy

      I don't think VMS will run on these devices although I must admit, I would very happy if they did.

    2. dogged
      FAIL

      Re: This is easy

      Because upsetting potential users is SUCH a great way to gain market share.

      1. The BigYin

        Re: This is easy

        "Because upsetting potential users is SUCH a great way to gain market share."

        Hasn't stopped MS!

      2. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
        Windows

        Re: This is oiling grit

        Why on earth don't the third parties making Windows work just close down the shop?

  2. nigel 15
    FAIL

    Dear Mozilla

    Fix the ####ing memory leak. Then when you've done that feel free to dick about with whatever you like.

    1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Dear Mozilla

      Fix the damn Android version too, while you are at it. It sucks. It has basically zero user control of privacy, and most plugins to make up for it's poor security (ghostery, noscript, betterprivacy, etc) are not compatible with it.

      1. RAMChYLD
        Mushroom

        Re: Dear Mozilla

        Hope this fixes the graphical corruption and hard crashes Firefox and Seamonkey were both exhibiting on the Win8 Consumer Preview. Both issues were graphics acceleration- related. Turning off GA fixed them.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Dear Mozilla

      The memory leak was fixed ages ago. You might have a dodgy plugin or profile.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dear Mozilla

      Am I the only one who doesn't have memory issues with 30+ tabs open?

      1. The BigYin

        @AC Re: Dear Mozilla

        No. But all it takes is an errant plugin and FF memory usage can go mental.

        It's seen FF draw down a lot of memory - but I have a lot of plugins. Even so, the resource usage is not enough for me to be overly worried.

    4. The BigYin

      Re: Dear Mozilla

      If you can reproduce it, file a bug (or check on the existing one).

      If it annoys you so much, fix it and offer a patch.

      It you lack the skills, pay/sponsor someone to fix it for you.

      Or wait for someone else to fix it.

      If none of the above are acceptable, use something else.

      1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

        Re: Dear Mozilla

        If none of the above are acceptable, use something else

        It's what I did, which will be fine until SRWare Iron starts to bloat.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Opera Browser

    Firefox is chock full of Google nuts (and bolts).

    1. dogged

      Re: Opera Browser

      1. This article was about Firefox. I'm sure you've heard of it, it's very popular.

      2. Very few people use Opera. They like Firefox though. And it's certainly not Google Chrome spyware, except possibly on Android where it uses Google's APIs.

    2. Market Research
      Trollface

      Market Research

      Now new version of Firefox not supporting the function such as google toolbar etc.... but if u know above questions answer then let me know that

  4. Irongut

    "whether or not Microsoft will actually permit rival software into the Windows 8 store that can be set as the default browser and elbow IE10 aside"

    Apple may be free to ban competing browsers from their OS but I think the EU judgement that led to the browser ballot screen will prevent MS from following suit.

    1. Spanners Silver badge
      Alert

      Will it still apply

      And is it relevant?

      I hope so but, MS has got a lot of lawyers and a fair bit or money and they may get a little help from Apple.

      1. Arctic fox
        Megaphone

        Re: Will it still apply and is it relevan? Err...yes it has to be, unless of course.........

        ..............the competition authorities actually want to make complete, total and utter knobheads of themselves by allowing Microsoft to get away with exactly the same behavior that they sanctioned them for before. It would be so obvious and so grotesque that I doubt whether they would permit it - although one should obviously never say never.

      2. John G Imrie

        Re: Will it still apply

        I do hope Microsoft try it.

        We are a bit strapped for cash in the EU. what with Vodaphone not paying it's taxes and the Greeks being bankrupt (technically). We could do with another massive fine from Microsoft to off set all the tax they don't pay by sending their profits via Ireland.

        1. Al Jones

          Re: Will it still apply

          Careful - think of all the VAT that governments in the EU collect on foot of sales of Microsoft products in the EU, and how much VAT those governments are losing out on when users switch to open source solutions :-)

          1. blondie101
            Linux

            Re: Will it still apply

            You mean that companies can pay local contractors in stead of handing over tax money to the USA... Our investing the money in their own company in stead of handing it over in a licensing scam....

            Why paying for crap services anymore?

      3. Charles Manning

        It will depend on the judgement handed down

        Did the ruling say "all future versions of Windows or Windows-like OSs" or did they just say Windows?

        If it is the latter then MS could potentially argue that Vista, then W7, then Metro have changed the product completely so the old judgment no longer applies.

        Anyway the judgments expired in May 2011.

        It is thus not surprising that MS is changing as much as possible. They will have a free reign to lock down APIs and do all that naughty shit all over again.

        Of course. if DOJ is still up for it they could take MS to court again. MS is however in a much better position than before. Metro can hardly be claimed to be in a dominant position and thus it will be hard for MS to be thrashed for anti-trust.

  5. semprance
    Holmes

    Who cares

    Wow, Mozilla is going to continue to make their product compatible with one of their supported operating systems?

    *yawn*

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who cares

      even though the 'supported operating systems' don't want it to?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Who cares

        That's because it's not about Microsoft wanting them to. It's about them keeping up in a competitive market, you know, like it has been for the past few decades.

        Idiot.

  6. Antony Riley

    "The other is whether or not Mozilla's work will easily transfer to Windows on ARM, about which Microsoft has said very little and for which a Windows 8 Consumer Preview is not available."

    They'd have to do something pretty screwed up for it not to, remember there's lots of 3rd party Firefox packages for obscure processors, these guys should have more experience with multiple targets than Microsoft (Anyone remember the failure that was NT for Alpha?).

    'course that's assuming that Microsoft haven't screwed up Windows on ARM and made it horribly incompatible...

  7. Magnus_Pym

    Windows on ARM

    No need to worry. It's only a spoiler product:

    MS Flunky: End Users all want tablets and but can't justify the extra cost of Wintel just so they can use Office.

    MS Exec: Well we will have make Windows run on ARM and make MS Office work too.

    MS Flunky: Will we need to do anything else?

    MSExec: Who cares? We have met user expectations.

  8. Gordon 10
    Unhappy

    Hooray

    Yet another reason my addins will be disabled next time firefox updates me to the quarterly released "major" version updates.

    /moanybastid

    1. Cameron Colley

      Re: Hooray

      Try Add-on Compatibility Reporter which allows plugins to run even if they claim incompatibility -- you can then disable only the ones which don't work, if any. I can't vouch for it on regular builds any more but all the plugins I use work fine on the nightly build with Add-on Compatibility Reporter installen, which includes NoScript and AddBlock Plus.

  9. wibbilus maximus
    Boffin

    Any guesses at the version number?

    i'll go for Firefox 2692

    1. silent_count
      Thumb Up

      Re: Any guesses at the version number?

      Firefox.. the browser so good we've had to start using double precision floating point numbers.. just for the version number.

      1. Goat Jam
        Joke

        Re: Any guesses at the version number?

        It's only a matter of time before Mozilla drop 32 bit support because the architecture will be unable to display the version number.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    choice?

    yup this is a pure guess but i think MS would be forced in to allowing different browers as default. at least in the EU anyway. it would only serve to give them more bad PR at the end of the day and the inevitable law suites would bound to follow. Its a guess, but id put money on it working.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IE still exists?

    I genuinely don't get why Microsoft don't scrap trying to make IE work properly and start again on a Chromium or Firefox core.

    1. djs

      Re: IE still exists?

      Chromium's core is webkit, which used to be KHTML, which was the rendered for the KDE project. KDE is a desktop environment for Unix, and Windows NT (hence XP, Vista, 7, 8, ...) is meant to be a Unix killer.

      Firefox is based on gecko, which was the cross platform renderer for Netscape6. Internet explorer was specifically meant to kill Netscape.

      Using either as the core of IE would not just be microsoft admitting that they had failed to kill Unix or Netscape (the technology, that is, since netscape the company is quite clearly dead), but actually admitting that after all these years of trying, they're still totally out-classed.

      1. dogged

        Re: IE still exists?

        IE9 is pretty good, and certainly standards-compliant.

        I don't use it - because there is no AdBlock+ for it, mostly - but I do have to test against it and it seems fine. Harmless, functional, pretty quick...

        But no ABP, no NoScript, no dictionaries and no Inspect Element means I think it's got a way to go. It's a shitload better than Safari though, and it's not actively spyware like Chrome.

  12. dssf

    So, will it make developers of time-keeping systems

    Play nice with firefox?

    Why MUST, for example, users of [an ms-beholden time-keeping software company ] be required to log in via msie? Hopefully, if developers would NOT compel clients to use msie, nor fixate on activex, then clients using Linux or Apple systems could truly do remote-time-keeping from an Android phone, from a Linux-based laptop, or even from any OS using Opera or Chrome or Safari...

    Besides, a time-keeping system is not a high-end game. Why must it be unnecessarily excessively hooked into ONE browser and ONE spreadsheet? Why cannot the data first go through a layer ANY standards-compliant browser and ANY capable spreadsheet or backend database?

    Oh, wait.. marketing dollars?

    If more vendors stopped doing things that made it a PITA to use non-ms browsers and behaved OS agnostic.... well, you know or can figure out the rest...

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