firefox for 64 bit windows canceled

[Nothinman]

Being able to access 4gb of ram means it's capable of playing those incredibly inefficient flash advertisements found on some web pages. It's not unusual to see firefox.exe hit 500-600mb of memory with only 1 tab open.

More important are the security enhancements from things like HEASLR.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Good article on the topic

http://arstechnica.com/information-...r-windows-should-be-prioritized-not-suspended

 

[Socio]

More important are the security enhancements from things like HEASLR.

IE10 64bit has this and ForceASLR as well.

 

[Nothinman]

IE10 64bit has this and ForceASLR as well.

And it's also not what this thread is about.

 

[Socio]

And it's also not what this thread is about.

It absolutely is, shows that by Firefox not supporting 64bit they will loose ground as users opt for more secure 64bit browsers that support things like HEASLR and ForceASLR, duh!

 

[Phynaz]

Mozilla continues its decent into irrelevance.

 

[Crow550]

Yeah but what about Chrome 64bit too?

I thought Browser makers weren't in a rush to move to 64bit as they have been more focused on Mobile browsing which is currently 32bit anyways.

 

[lxskllr]

Mozilla continues its decent into irrelevance.

Mozilla is plenty relevant. They're the one group you can count on to make YOUR interests their primary goal. They don't sell products, and they don't sell you as a product. Their primary goal is an open and free web.

 

[Phynaz]

Mozilla is plenty relevant. They're the one group you can count on to make YOUR interests their primary goal. They don't sell products, and they don't sell you as a product. Their primary goal is an open and free web.

All the above doesn't make them relevant.

 

[lxskllr]

All the above doesn't make them relevant.

How so? They're still the leading 3rd party browser, and they're the only relevant 3rd party browser that stands for user freedom. That's the only relevance that matters.

 

[VirtualLarry]

How so? They're still the leading 3rd party browser, and they're the only relevant 3rd party browser that stands for user freedom. That's the only relevance that matters.

Amen! Preach it!

Anyways, I've been using Waterfox 64-bit for quite some time now. Initially there were some plugin issues, mostly with Adobe, but things seemed to have stabilized. I did try the Mozills Minefield 64-bit nightlies before that, and they did have "issues".

I am disappointed, with the proliferation of 64-bit OSes on the desktop, that the Mozilla foundation would de-prioritize 64-bit Firefox. Maybe they are preparing for the end of the desktop PC altogether, and figure that their effort should be spent on mobile. Thus the x64 experiment by AMD and Intel was a waste of time.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Maybe they are preparing for the end of the desktop PC altogether, and figure that their effort should be spent on mobile. Thus the x64 experiment by AMD and Intel was a waste of time.

Who says it's gonna be the end of desktops?! I'd like to find this person, then deliver a swift, merciless slap across his face.

 

[Nothinman]

It absolutely is, shows that by Firefox not supporting 64bit they will loose ground as users opt for more secure 64bit browsers that support things like HEASLR and ForceASLR, duh!

The amount of users that really care about a 64-bit build is minuscule compared to those that want visible features like FF's extensions and sync. That should be obvious since they've never had an official 64-bit build and their marketshare has held up just fine. Obviously Chrome has given them some more serious competition, but that's not because of 64-bit builds by any means.

 

[beginner99]

This makes no sense especially with the arguments given.

Can't differentiate bug reports between 32 and 64-bit? Well, why does it work for Mac and Linux versions?
Same for plugins. Those 32-bit plugins will also fail on linux and so on.

And as mentioned in the linked article what opera already has (and seems pretty straight-forward) is that it is irrelevant if the plugin is 32 or 64 bit. both can run in 64-bit opera.

I mean that should not be that hard to achieve...I don't know for me it sounds like there i ssome general design flaw in FF that makes it very hard to change things.

 

[Nothinman]

This makes no sense especially with the arguments given.

Can't differentiate bug reports between 32 and 64-bit? Well, why does it work for Mac and Linux versions?
Same for plugins. Those 32-bit plugins will also fail on linux and so on.

And as mentioned in the linked article what opera already has (and seems pretty straight-forward) is that it is irrelevant if the plugin is 32 or 64 bit. both can run in 64-bit opera.

I mean that should not be that hard to achieve...I don't know for me it sounds like there i ssome general design flaw in FF that makes it very hard to change things.

From what I gather Opera runs plugins in a separate process and lets them do their job by passing data to and from them with some kind of IPC. I would guess that Opera has done that for a while just because the didn't have native support for the nsplugin architecture and it worked out to their advantage in the long run. I would think that FF would need to virtually rewrite their plugin system to take it out of process and handle passing data to and from both 32-bit and 64-bit plugin processes.

If you don't think it's that difficult why don't you grab the FF source and take a crack at it? That's the great thing about free software, you can actually fix things.

 

[lxskllr]

If you don't think it's that difficult why don't you grab the FF source and take a crack at it? That's the great thing about free software, you can actually fix things.

Yup, and I wouldn't get too hung up on the name. If someone really needs 64bit on Windows, there's Waterfox. That's Firefox in all but name. I don't even use Firefox. I'm using Iceweasel, but it's still Firefox. No big deal.

 

[Cerb]

This is absolutely right, more secure, ability to use more ram etc... I believe the last data I saw there were more people using Windows 7 64bit than XP and Vista 64bit users combined. Pursuing a 64bit version should be their top goal, not giving up on it!

Correct me if I am wrong but 64bit apps like the OS have the ability to access more than 4gb of ram where a 32bit apps even on a 64bit OS are still stuck at the 4bg threshold.

32-bit just has 4GB, and the application can't use it all--most can't even use all they allocate. In a normal Windows instance, the OS gets 2GB and the application gets 2GB. 64-bit applications can access >4GB (8TB?), but 32-bit ones cannot access 4GB. At best, they can access 3GB, if you turn that on, and the application in question is large address aware, but for 99.999999% of users, it's 2GB.

A 32-bit application in a 64-bit environment, that is large address aware, and thus can utilize 3GB in 32-bit Windows so configured, can use up to 4GB in 64-bit Windows. Applications which are not large address aware are limited to 2GB in both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions.

Isn't the last thing keeping *some* check on the bloat of web design these days the 32-bit browser and plug-in limit? If all browsers and plug-ins were 64-bit, you wouldn't be able to load a webpage other than plain text that wasn't a full-blown application.

32-bit is slower, and will have to garbage collect more aggressively, and will have reduced security. We're already at a point where browsers can use >2GB VM, but we're still years away from single websites needing that kind of address space.

I doubt most average users don't even know what 64bit is. Let alone whether or not their browser supports it. I for one think it's a shame that they haulted development, but there's always waterfox.

Most users shouldn't know, either. Everyone should be using fat installers, and ship both with everything. But, even MS themselves don't do that. So, fat installers are a rarity.

I am disappointed, with the proliferation of 64-bit OSes on the desktop, that the Mozilla foundation would de-prioritize 64-bit Firefox. Maybe they are preparing for the end of the desktop PC altogether, and figure that their effort should be spent on mobile. Thus the x64 experiment by AMD and Intel was a waste of time.

That makes no sense, though: mobile 64-bit are on their way, and unlike x86-64, they're late (we have 1-2GB RAM mobile devices, already!). 64-bit has been the future since about 1991. It's been the present for at least 5 years. Pretty soon, it'll just be expected.