Mozilla: Modern UI not the reason for discontinuing Firefox for Windows 8

Firefox developer Brian Bondy stated in a blog post that Mozilla has decided to discontinue the touch version due to the difficult-to-change setting for choosing the default browser in Windows 8. The reason wouldn’t be the Modern UI.

According to Bondy, Microsoft has made the ability to change the default browser within the touch environment too difficult in Windows 8. As a result, users who install the custom Firefox for Windows 8 would often not realize that there is a custom browser environment for the Modern UI interface. A user has to go to the control panel to change all default settings so that in this case Firefox is available within the Modern UI environment.

The complex process of changing the default browser in Windows 8 has been the main reason for dropping the special version for the Modern interface, according to Bondy. In addition, there would be far too few users; during the test phase, a maximum of 1,000 testers per day would have been measured, which meant that insufficient test data was collected.

Bondy denies that the Modern UI interface itself is to blame for the decision to discontinue the Firefox for the Modern environment, a reason cited by many tech media. According to the Firefox developer, Modern UI is “important for touch hardware” and useful in practice. Nevertheless, Mozilla would have made the right decision to delete the modified version of its browser.