No Firefox 4 64 Bit for You

By | September 10, 2010 | 21 Comments

No Firefox 4 64 Bit for YouEven though 64 bit operating systems are becoming a standard in today’s computing world, Mozilla’s Director of Firefox (Mike Beltzner) revealed that company has no plans to release 64 bit Firefox 4 final build in the near future.

Early in the summer we decided to not yet provide supported 64-bit builds on Windows, and will instead work on delivering those in some future release.

If only we had a 64-bit Flash Player build for all the platforms…


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • monty

    “If only we had a 64-bit Flash Player build for all the platforms…”
    Indeed, there is no point in having 64-bit browser when there is no 64-bit flash (and HTML5 is not ready yet).

    • Foo

      I haven’t had Flash installed for years and I’ve had no problems.

      • Zak

        Well, that’s silly of you.

  • Gonçalo

    “Indeed, there is no point in having 64-bit browser when there is no 64-bit flash”
    and indeed, there is no point in having 64-bit flash when there is no 64-bit browsers.
    Anyway, I’m pretty sure you can make a 64b browser work with a 32b flash player.

    • jrk

      Win7 ships a 64-bit IE.

      • Foo

        Mozilla plans to ship Firefox 64bits on Windows only, apparently due to Adobe’s recent jerk move of stopping to produce 64bits builds on Linux.
        It sounds like they might ship official 64bits builds on Linux with NSPluginWrapper.
         
        It’s worth noting that 64bit builds are still available for Linux and Mac as of the latest beta.

        • http://ewanm89.co.uk ewanm89

          Urm, actually, adobe have now re-released (back on Wednesday) 64bit flash preview for all three platforms.

  • Pingback: Vorerst keine 64 Bit Version « Browser Fuchs

  • VJ

    Well I have a Nintendo 64.   Its supposed to be the first 64 bit game system and its definitely faster than Sega Genesis.   MUCH FASTER. 

    • Tribbles

      I still can’t get 64-bit Win 7 loaded on my Commodore 64.

      • Oresama

        The 8-bit Commodore 64 does not support 64-bit Windows 7.

        • JJ

          but it supports 32-bit Windows 7.

  • http://just-thinkin.net Kirk M

    I’ve just verified this on the “mozilla.dev” Google Group. There will be no 64 bit version of Firefox for Windows and it’s can’t be due to the lack of 64 bit Flash which is currently available in beta builds.

    How ironic is it that I’ve been running Firefox 3.6.12 64 bit with 64 bit Flash and 64 bit Java in Linux Mint 10 (derived from Ubuntu 10.10) and am also testing Firefox 4 64 bit nightly builds using the same Flash and Java plugins on the same OS without a problem. Mac OSX also is supported as well for 64 bit Firefox which also works fine. But no Windows 64 bit support for the near future. Too buggy they say and not worth supporting at this time. 32 bit version of Firefox will work fine for the interim.

    Kinda’ interesting to see that the market leader is being pushed to the back burner in favor of OSX and the major Linux distros for once. Even if it is only Firefox. ;)

    • Roger Malthus

      “Kinda’ interesting to see that the market leader is being pushed to the back burner in favor of OSX and the major Linux distros for once. Even if it is only Firefox. ;)”

      The market leader is still XP, and XP 64bit was a nightmare and didn’t support most hardware. So, until a majority of the world upgrades to 64bit Windows I don’t see a need for 64bit Firefox. If you want to run 64bit, for no real reason, run Linux.

      • http://just-thinkin.net Kirk M

        Roger – All true what you about XP and XP 64 bit. It was without a doubt a nightmare. But that was then and Windows 7 64 bit will soon enough take XP’s place as the market leader. Still, I agree with Mozilla that it doesn’t pay to waste the money and “man-hours” (person-hours?) on a 64 bit version for Windows until the market calls for it.

        However, as far as running a 64 bit version of the latest Firefox in Linux (Mint in my case along with the 64 bit versions of Flash and Java) is concerned it is most definitely not for nothing as the browser can take full advantage of memory above 3 GB. Not that it usually, even under heavy use, need that kind of memory but, then again, having the overhead makes the experience all that much more smoother. Besides, being a Linux based OS user (after years of using and testing MS OSs) I was plain curious as to how it ran. So far, no complaints whatsoever.

  • http://hugo.osvaldobarrera.com.ar/ Hugo Osvaldo Barrera

    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/square/
    There’s a 64bit flash, has been there for ages

    • Sarjoor

      No, there has never been a 64-bit Flash. Links to Adobe Labs don’t count.

      There must be an official, publicly released, supported for normal daily use version for it to be considered available.

      • Sarjoor

        For details, see Adobe’s knowledge base:

        Why doesn’t Flash Player come in a 64-bit version?

        http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html#main_Whynot64bit

      • BooSquad

        Says who? The official release police?

        Hugo merely said there was a 64bit flash and square is 64bit and has yet to fail to run any flash content encountered on websites I visit – in fact it works extremely well since it seems to crash less and provide better performance in my experience. Anyone googling 64bit flash will find it – so it’s not hidden and you don’t need to sign up to download it so I define that as public.

        • Sarjoor

          Not the official release police, but for regular users.

          We are not talking about googling for 64bit flash and “finding it”. No, just because a test version is available for download does NOT mean it is public.

          Public (and especially in this case for developed and then released software) means officially distributed by the author and intended for general public use. And since Flash Square is still in development, it’s not for general public use.

          So no, there is no 64-bit Flash yet (of course meaning officially for public use).

  • Sarjoor

    Not the official release police, but for regular users.

    We are not talking about googling for 64bit flash and “finding it”. No, just because a test version is available for download does NOT mean it is public.

    Public (and especially in this case for developed and then released software) means officially distributed by the author and intended for general public use. And since Flash Square is still in development, it’s not for general public use.

    So no, there is no 64-bit Flash yet (of course meaning officially for public use).

«
»