Boy, Mozilla sure is taking its time. The browser marker first made public its plans to develop a Windows 8 version of the Firefox web browser more than a year ago.
This version of Firefox for Microsoft’s newest operating system was said to include full support for touch input and make use of the Metro (or Modern UI) design philosophy.
The company launched the first nightly build of Metro Firefox in February for testers.
But now it looks like that the final, non-beta version of Firefox for Windows 8 will take a fair while coming. A post on the Mozilla Wiki development website detailing the current timeline of the browser’s development shows that if everything goes according to plan, Firefox could launch on November 19.
A long time away, as you can see — but what happens if things don’t go according to plan?
The best case scenario could result in the launch being moved up to October 2. That is, if development picks up pace and all the bugs, errors and performance issues are ironed out. If not, and things take a turn for the worst, the launch could be pushed back as far as to March 20, 2014.
It appears that the development of this particular version is taking longer than expected. Mozilla, itself, hinted at the difficulties in making Firefox work with Windows 8 when it first started development.
Windows 8, according to the company, is an entirely new environment that requires a new Firefox frontend and system integration points.
We can wait, Mozilla, we can wait — just make it worth it.
