With only a few weeks to go before Microsoft's big Windows overhaul, Mozilla puts forward its first version of Firefox preview optimized for Windows 8's touch interface. How to install it Once you download and run the Firefox Metro Preview (download installer) in Windows 8, you must close Firefox in Metro and Desktop if you already have them installed, then open the Control Panel and set Internet Explorer as the default browser. From there, run in Desktop mode the Firefox Nightly EXE that you just downloaded and set it as the Default when prompted. A Windows 8 prompt will open, choose Nightly as the default, and then in Firefox, go to Options/Advanced/General and set it as the default browser there, too. What works and what doesn't -- so far The Metro Preview version of Firefox is being worked on in an experimental branch of the Firefox Nightly builds called Elm. Erica Jostedt, Mozilla's Senior Manager of Product Communications, confirmed that it doesn't have a ship date yet. "We don't have the set timeline yet -- it's a preview right now that's updated nightly, but on the Elm branch. When it lands on mozilla-central, it's officially on the trains," she wrote in an e-mail to CNET. "Elm is the experimental repository where most of our Metro development work has been happening. This repository produces nightly builds, much like the Firefox Nightly channel," wrote Asa Dotzler, Firefox's product manager. Those builds will update automatically every day, but they're not part of the regular Firefox release schedule. The Firefox Metro Preview build has a lot of standard Firefox features working, as well as some Metro optimizations. It has an option for always showing tabs, as well as a more Internet Explorer 10-style tab preview that hides from view after a few seconds. It also offers an IE10-inspired way to pin tabs as tiles to your Start screen, and a different take on present Bookmarks, History, and Downloads that looks like the bird's eye view of horizontal tiles used in Semantic Zoom.
