After two years of development, Mozilla has announced it will not release a Metro-fied version of Firefox for Windows 8.

The Firefox for Metro team has been building, testing, and refining a Firefox product for Windows 8 since 2012, but it has decided to shelve the project after noticing users have practically no interest: "On any given day, we have, for instance, millions of people testing prerelease versions of Firefox desktop, but we've never seen more than 1,000 active daily users in the Metro environment," explained the team.

The Windows 8 operating system features what Microsoft previously called the Metro interface for touchscreen devices. Microsoft wanted to inject its PC operating system into the tablet space, and it tried to do so with Windows 8. However, many Windows users complained they had trouble adopting the significant UI change, which subsequently caused Microsoft to backpedal somewhat and re-introduce old classics like a Start button into Windows 8.

READ: Chrome for Windows 8 in the works

The Firefox for Metro team said it could ship Firefox for Windows 8, but, due to a lack of users and real-world testing, there would be many bugs discovered and follow-up engineering required. The team therefore had to pick its battles and described Firefox for Windows 8 a "bad one to pick". That said, the browser code will still "live on". The team just plans to focus on reaching more people going forward.