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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

It's likely that a combination of these:

1. Low percentage of Windows 8/8.1 users among Firefox testers

2. Low percentage of Windows 8/8.1 users among Firefox developers

3. Low usage of the Windows Metro/Modern UI (I don't know anyone that uses it on a desktop or laptop besides playing solitaire)

4. Low adoption of Windows RT tablets/convertibles (these are the ones that are forced to use a Metro/Modern browser)

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The first thing I did after getting Windows 8/8.1 on my new laptop was to install StartIsBack and disable all the Metro/Modern UI stuff. I find it very annoying (especially in a non-touch environment).

I'm fine with Mozilla focusing on Firefox for Desktop and Android. I'm a big user of both.

Yeah. Firefox on desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows), Firefox for Android, and Firefox OS (for that mobile phone competition angle). No need for Firefox on Metro right now (hardly any users and the ones there are don't know what different browsers are anyway) or Firefox on iOS (since it would just be a UI skin over the gimped version of Mobile Safari thanks to Apple's anti-competitive rules).

Regarding #4, Microsoft doesn't allow competing browsers on Windows RT anyway. So even the users forced to use Metro would never experience Firefox's Metro mode.

As noted in the linked blog post:

> At first, it looked like we would be locked out completely. We eventually broke open Metro (though never the RT line of ARM-based products) and we got to work.

Unless I missed something, you're allowed to make browsers for WinRT, but for "security reasons" they disallow access to certain system calls that are necessary for a fast Javascript JIT. Only Internet Explorer gets to use those "private" system calls.

That is a annoying, but a ton more open than iOS which won't even let you do Javascript at all. So, you're fored into to doing a UI skin atop the slower, non-JIT Mobile Safari renderer.

This statement is completely untrue.

- iOS forbids JIT just like Windows, making it no worse than Windows.

- iOS 7 made JavaScriptCore public API so all iOS apps may use JavaScript.

- Pre-iOS 7, companies were already embedding SpiderMonkey and their own forks of JavaScriptCore in iOS apps. This is allowed as long as JIT is off.

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