Firefox for Windows 8 preview build now available for download | Hacker News Reader

Firefox for Windows 8 preview build now available for download

winbeta.org

18 pointsViolentJason23 comments

Well, thanks to Microsoft not allowing anyone except themselves access to the Win32 APIs on Windows 8 RT, ARM tablets aren't going to have Firefox on them.

Thanks to the market leader for making this an acceptable practice.

Well, to be fair, Apple allow you to access somewhat low-level APIs on iOS too, to my knowledge.

There are strict limitations on iOS that prevent third-party browsers from getting good performance. For example, third-party applications distributed through the app store cannot do any runtime code generation. This prevents third-party browsers from having great Javascript performance.

Enterprise apps do not have this limitation, but that does not help regular consumers.

? I don't think this is correct. The version of Firefox that this article is talking about should run on ARM. What you won't get on ARM is a desktop version of Firefox.

No, this version will not run on ARM. This is not a regular Metro app. On x86 systems, Microsoft has made a special exception for third-party browsers to utilize Win32 APIs. So both Chrome and Firefox under x86+Metro are still using their underlying desktop codebase, just with a different UI.

On ARM, only MS apps are allowed to access Win32 APIs.

Aside from legacy code, why do they need the Win32 APIs?

There are also technical limitations on Metro apps. For example, JIT compilation is not possible for pure Metro apps because Metro APIs do not allow marking memory as executable.

It's correct. No other browser will work on Windows RT, just like no other browser will work on WP8.

For what it's worth I am hoping the 10 people with Windows tablets won't miss it too much.

Then again it's possible MS could gain some serious traction in "enterprise" active-directory heavy environments.

Apologies for the off-topic rant.

What makes you think there are any win32 APIs left? RT talks to NT.

Don't Metro IE and Metro Office still use Win32?

IE (well trident) isn't tied to Win32. Office I'm not sure but I understand they've rewritten swathes of it for 2013.

You sure that IE isn't?

Well actually, you're probably right, considering Trident also runs on Windows CE. But I'd be surprised if they went to the bother of bypassing Win32.

100% sure. I've seen the source code for trident via shared source a few years ago.

Its well written and fairly modular. It has COM/IDL bindings but the core is very clean. I'd say it was better written than chrome.

It also used to run on Unix!

On UNIX? Where?

IE4 ran on Solaris and HP/UX.

Here's an issue: this doesn't blend in all that well with the Windows 8 environment. The tabs, for example, are rounded. It looks nice, but the whole idea of the Windows 8 interface is to do away with needless skeumorphism. Making browser tabs look like real-life folder tabs is just that. They're going the distance by making the buttons in Windows 8 style, Windows 8 style start page, touch features, etc. Why would they go with rounded tabs?

It's certainly looking more "metro" than Chrome attempt so far. I kinda like that it's a bit of a fusion of both, still keeping some elements identifiable as Firefox.

Firefox tabs don't look native on any platform. For one reason or another it seems the developers aren't interested in doing so, or they'd have done something since it's more-or-less a regression since FF2 on linux and a longstanding issue elsewhere.

Can we install this version in parallel? Would this work just as well on Windows Server 2012?

So - yes, it can be installed in parallel (installs as 'Nightly').

It cannot be run in parallel - it seems to reuse the FF session and fight for a shared 'is the app already running' mutex. So you need to quit FF to start 'Nightly'.

And it's the only app so far that I've found that doesn't work with the builtin Administrator account (I'm running a Windows Server 2012 instance here for tests and fooling around. Everything works fine with that account, including IE. This browser refuses to start in Metro mode). Hmmm

The tabs are huge. Is this Metro Style?

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