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Work on the touch-oriented version of Firefox for 

Windows 8 has already started at Mozilla HQ, according to a Mozille developer published on his blog earlier this week.

Mozilla Firefox For Windows 8: It Has Begun

It has begun being developed that is. Mozilla has apparently started working the touch-oriented version of Firefox that would be deployed on Windows 8’s Metro UI. This piece of information comes form a software developer at Mozilla, who also gave some other details about the project in a post that was made earlier this week on his blog.

The developer’s name is Brian Brondy and he is a software developer who is working as a Platform Engineer for the Firefox project. According to what he had to say, there’s actually a Firefox app that is currently launching and running inside Windows 8 Metro. However, it is still an empty shell of an app that does not have web-browsing capabilities.

Mozilla is of course trying to make an app that will be right at home on the brand new Metro UI that is being introduced by Windows 8. The good thing about that is that you will only have to install Firefox once in your account and all Windows 8 devices using that account will be using the sane browser with the same settings, bookmarks, etc. The new Firefox will apparently be both for the Dektop and the Metro-style touch-first environments. So you have true cross-platform support.

There’s one catch though — due to the integrated way Metro works, it can have only one web browser active at any time. So the only way to use Firefox on Windows 8 Metro is to make it the default browser. You can use both IE10 and Firefox side by side on the desktop mode but that will not be possible on Metro.

The app is supposed to get a proof of concept some time around Summer when a very early version of the app will be available. Mozilla also has plans to release a beta version in the second half of 2012, which could be anytime from June to the end of the year.