I certainly don't disagree with the idea, though. Mozilla have limited resource and by almost all accounts the Windows tile UI isn't being adopted rapidly or willingly.
It's true, we don't know what the usage would have been like if we did some real marketing of the Metro feature. We briefly had a "what's new" page that promoted Metro for users of Firefox Aurora on Windows 8, but we never did a similar promotion on the larger Firefox Beta channel. We had another in-product promotion planned for after the release of Firefox 28, but that's no longer in the cards.
In the absence of that, we have to rely on metrics from desktop Firefox (e.g. what portion of our users are running it on the touch hardware that our Metro app was designed for) and on any data we can get about the PC industry as a whole.
I'm torn about this decision (understandably, I think), and I still think that Microsoft has a good chance of eventually building a much larger user base for its touch platforms. But the improvements we wanted to make to the Metro browser (like making the scrolling as smooth as possible) would have required ongoing work not just from my team but from other groups like the graphics and layout teams, whose energy may be better used on other platforms (desktop, Android, Firefox OS). So we had to think strategically about what's right for us to ship this year.
It just seems odd to me that the article cites Metro's adoption as "flat" based on "less than 1000" daily Metro users versus "millions" of prerelease Firefox users when the product wasn't marketed or widely available - the comparison is so unfair that that particular data feels like fluff.
It sounds like the actual decision to pull the plug was made using both a critical eye on the market and much better data than the anecdote from the article would lead one to believe.
We've been using that project name for a couple of years, and haven't seen a good reason to change. Microsoft hasn't settled on a useable replacement. For a while they used "Modern style" but now they've dropped that too. Now they mostly use "Windows Store app" in their developer documentation, but we found that too confusing, especially since Metro-enabled desktop browsers like Firefox and Chrome aren't necessarily installed through the Windows Store. Meanwhile, the Microsoft white paper on "Developing a Metro-enabled desktop browser" was retitled "Developing a new experience enabled desktop browser" [1], which is even less... wieldy.
[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46541...
1) I didn't even bother to install Firefox on my Windows 8 tablet because I didn't know about this feature; had I known, I would have.
2) http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-launch-firefox-... seems a far cry from a "giant button" - not only do I rarely if ever use that menu (because keyboard shortcuts) but I doubt I'd have picked up on that option unless I were looking for it.
Wait. You have to install the desktop version to get it to work in Metro? What? No, don't make me do that. No wonder no-one used it.
Second, some details about the store... "Windows Store apps" can use the IE rendering engine to browse the web, but can't use other existing libraries like Gecko or Blink. "Metro-enabled desktop browsers" like Firefox and Chrome and IE (the terminology comes from an old Microsoft white paper [1]) can take advantage of a special exception to the restrictions placed on most "Metro" apps, but only if they are set as the default browser for both desktop and Metro mode. And they can't be installed like Windows Store apps; you have to install them through the desktop.
Metro-enabled desktop browsers (like other desktop apps) can be listed in the Windows Store, but can't be installed there. Instead, the Windows Store page will just contain a link an installer on the developer's web site. Chrome links to their installer from the Windows Store, and we'd have done the same if we shipped the Metro app in a Firefox release. (We could still list desktop Firefox in the Windows Store, subject to the same restrictions.)
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/firefox-for-windows-8-adds-a-touch-of-m...
I don't understand why it is legal for Microsoft (AND Apple) to do this! How is this different from what Microsoft did with IE vs Netscape? Why doesn't this violate anti-trust or competition laws?
It doesn't violate anti-trust laws because you have a very viable option of using Android or any other tablet OS.
The restriction against using browser engines other than IE's Trident applies to "Windows Store Apps" for desktop, too.
Mozilla and Google managed to claw out a half-hearted concession for the browsers themselves on the desktop (though not RT), but even then the other restrictions that mbrubeck noted still apply: the browser needs to be installed outside the Windows Store and only the default browser is allowed to present a touch interface. I'm not sure what purpose is behind the latter restriction, other than making switching or experimenting with browsers slightly more of a hassle.
...which they have spent a lot of on needlessly changing the UI, so at least refusing to do it this time is a welcome change in direction.