64-Bit Firefox Poised to Launch in the Near Future

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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It took a whole lot of time for adopters to embrace 64-bit browser versions, but the scale has tipped enough to finally warrant 64-bit Firefox. Mozilla hasn't made the official announcement yet, but Firefox Wiki has posted documentation showing Mozilla plans to launch a 64-bit version of its browser as Firefox 37 next March.

Interestingly, another reason Mozilla gives for this change is the fear that Microsoft might retire the x86 version of its OS with the launch of Windows 10, which would leave Firefox behind its competitors.
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Is there any real indication that MS is considering not releasing a x86 Windows 10? They released a x86 version of the Tech Preview.
 
Dimethyltryptamine said:
WaterFox has been out for a very long time and is based off of Mozilla in a 64-bit version.
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I used Waterfox for awhile, but abandoned it when they were slow to update and got a release behind. Looks like they've fixed that, though. I'm on Cyberfox now, uses the classic look, and is compiled separately for Intel and AMD.

For all the hemming and hawing they've put out about how hard it was to get plugins, etc. to work in 64 bit, and how easily they actually do, this is quite a surprise. Won't switch back, but maybe it will bring some further speed improvements to the forks.
 
MajorDomo said:
It took a whole lot of time for adopters to embrace 64-bit browser versions, but the scale has tipped enough to finally warrant 64-bit Firefox. Mozilla hasn't made the official announcement yet, but Firefox Wiki has posted documentation showing Mozilla plans to launch a 64-bit version of its browser as Firefox 37 next March.
Click to expand...

Strange since theres a 32bit version of Windows 10 technical preview, but I guess MS could kill it before they launch next year.
 
Eventually! The RAM limit is killing me for web development (several apps) and lots of windows open after 5-6 hours of work since it needs a restart.
 
Considering that Win10 is coming out in both 32-bit AND 64-bit flavors, I seriously doubt that this is a legitimate reason for Firefox to deliberately kill a portion of their user-base.
 
I think Microsoft should scrap a 32 bit Windows 10 altogether. They need to do more to transition COMPLETELY to 64 bit as they said they were going to do long long ago. We should have been there already but for some strange reason a lot of companies are still dragging their feet including Microsoft. They need to get it done.
 
I use Palemoon which is 64-bit and plus, it doesn't have that God awful Australis UI.
 
Mike89 said:
I think Microsoft should scrap a 32 bit Windows 10 altogether. They need to do more to transition COMPLETELY to 64 bit as they said they were going to do long long ago. We should have been there already but for some strange reason a lot of companies are still dragging their feet including Microsoft. They need to get it done.
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This would be great. Except for you already get a lot of people bitching that Microsoft doesn't support older devices or anything (printers, scanners mostly). People really complain when their older hardware isn't compatible with the newer OS. Dropping 32 bit support would piss them off even more. Yes, it would be great to drop it and get people to move forward. But, the whole "they are forcing me to upgrade" BS would never stop...
 
Ur_Mom said:
This would be great. Except for you already get a lot of people bitching that Microsoft doesn't support older devices or anything (printers, scanners mostly). People really complain when their older hardware isn't compatible with the newer OS. Dropping 32 bit support would piss them off even more. Yes, it would be great to drop it and get people to move forward. But, the whole "they are forcing me to upgrade" BS would never stop...
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Plus the 1GB ram $99 tablets would not work at all well with a 64 bit OS. ;) There is a place for the 32 bit OS including Business apps that will not work with a 64 Bit OS. Will be for a while yet.

Heck, we will probably get 128 bit support before 32 bit is totally gone.
 
If that new 128 bit hardware that was being talked about not that long ago needs to be emulated by windows on windows that would suggest that there might be 64bit and 128bit version of windows. Be interesting to see firefox, dell and stardock are planning interfaces like the carriers do for android phones... especially if you can modify the UI with scripts.

I really liked "“We’re not talking about one UI to rule them all,” he said. “We’re talking about one product family" off the neowin article...

I know companies hate replacing software and companies used to hate porting it until they found they could make more money releasing a faster version... but 128 bit interface and less over head damn.
 
Dimethyltryptamine said:
WaterFox has been out for a very long time and is based off of Mozilla in a 64-bit version.
Click to expand...

I used to use it all the time but the plugin compatibility list kept shrinking as the updates slowed.
But yeah, it was really snappy and stable, if it wasn't for running grease monkey I'd probably still be using it.
 
ManofGod said:
Plus the 1GB ram $99 tablets would not work at all well with a 64 bit OS. ;) There is a place for the 32 bit OS including Business apps that will not work with a 64 Bit OS. Will be for a while yet.

Heck, we will probably get 128 bit support before 32 bit is totally gone.
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Even then it will be hard. There are people not upgrading from XP because their old Windows 3.11 (or DOS) software doesn't run on anything greater than that. Either it's expensive to upgrade and they go as long as they can then bitch when their 25 year old software doesn't work or the developer isn't around anymore (or lazy) and the software isn't maintained or exists anymore.

I have some hardware (Ham radio programming interfaces, Serial to USB stuff, etc.) that won't work with Windows 8+. I have a spare PC for that. Sucks that I need to have it, but there is no way to fix it without replacing the devices.

32-bit is fine for some things. Most consumer boxes come with 64-bit anyway, so it's not a huge issue for 32-bit machines being out there. Like you said - tablets and some business applications (which 32-bit software runs fine on, it's the old 16-bit that won't). Even Microsoft's own Office has issues with it's 64-bit version, like VBA stuff not running correctly.
 
drakken said:
If that new 128 bit hardware that was being talked about not that long ago
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You misunderstood that talk. 128-bit, 256-bit and 512-bit vector registers are not the entire architecture; they are just a specialized shortcut to allow a single instruction to work on up to eight 32-bit or 64-bit elements in parallel. There are no plans for 128-bit or higher architecture. 64-bit is plenty of overkill; 16 exabytes really, truly is enough.
 
evilsofa said:
You misunderstood that talk. 128-bit, 256-bit and 512-bit vector registers are not the entire architecture; they are just a specialized shortcut to allow a single instruction to work on up to eight 32-bit or 64-bit elements in parallel. There are no plans for 128-bit or higher architecture. 64-bit is plenty of overkill; 16 exabytes really, truly is enough.
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512K really, truly, is enough. ;)
 
They will most likely release 64 bit along side 32 bit at the same time like how windows does it.
 
64-bit is the right direction. Now they just need to cure the browser from the insatiable ram hunger.
 
Mike89 said:
I think Microsoft should scrap a 32 bit Windows 10 altogether. They need to do more to transition COMPLETELY to 64 bit as they said they were going to do long long ago. We should have been there already but for some strange reason a lot of companies are still dragging their feet including Microsoft. They need to get it done.
Click to expand...

32-bit versions of Windows still support 16-bit applications. There's a lot of old software out there that can't or wont be updated.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
32-bit versions of Windows still support 16-bit applications. There's a lot of old software out there that can't or wont be updated.
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And just like when Windows 8 was new there's various Intel processors that were recently released that are not 64-bit capable or have some other compatibility issue that requires a 32-bit version.
 
Ur_Mom said:
This would be great. Except for you already get a lot of people bitching that Microsoft doesn't support older devices or anything (printers, scanners mostly). People really complain when their older hardware isn't compatible with the newer OS. Dropping 32 bit support would piss them off even more. Yes, it would be great to drop it and get people to move forward. But, the whole "they are forcing me to upgrade" BS would never stop...
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If they have ancient hardware why are they upgrading their OS then? Doesn't make any sense.
 
B00nie said:
If they have ancient hardware why are they upgrading their OS then? Doesn't make any sense.
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Would you consider the Dell Venue 8 Pro ancient? Those and other baytrail systems are on 32-bit because connected standby does not support 64-bit. Those are the people he's talking about. The internet would have a collective fit if they didn't support devices that are barely a year old.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64

32bit Firefox will still run on Windows even if they don't release an x86 version. This won't be an issue until WoW64 is no longer included with Windows which will be some time yet.

That being said its long past time for Firefox to offer both 32 and 64bit versions side by side for people to slowly transition.
 
Ryokurin said:
Would you consider the Dell Venue 8 Pro ancient? Those and other baytrail systems are on 32-bit because connected standby does not support 64-bit. Those are the people he's talking about. The internet would have a collective fit if they didn't support devices that are barely a year old.
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I believe that the connected standby issue has been resolved for 64 bit architectures. Beyond this particular issue, most of the Bay Trail devices that have come to market are resourced constrained, 2 GB or less memory and 64 GB or less storage. We now have Windows tablets coming with 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB storage. A 64 bit OS these kinds of devices would have little benefit while consuming more precious storage space and memory.
 
drakken said:
If that new 128 bit hardware that was being talked about not that long ago needs to be emulated by windows on windows that would suggest that there might be 64bit and 128bit version of windows.
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You can already run 128-bit instructions on modern processors from within a 32bit or 64bit OS (SSE enables this). There's no need to make the entire OS 128bit
 
Pinski said:
Weird, considering FireFox had dropped support for the win64 version of the firefox nightly builds a while ago.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558448
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/1...ropping-64-bit-windows-nightly-builds-for-now

Not certain where people are getting their information that firefox is going to magically start releasing an official version for win64, when they don't even give their nightly build any support at all.
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That was largely misinterpreted by blogs. What they stopped was automatic nightly builds of the 64-bit windows version, because it was never officially supported. Even then around a month after this announcement they re-enabled them. You can still get them today if you want.

With most systems running 64-bit now, it's just starting to make sense to officially support it, if not just because of that, but because it's a chance to drop binary plugin support, which is largely responsible for Firefox's bad rep.
 
Pinski said:
Weird, considering FireFox had dropped support for the win64 version of the firefox nightly builds a while ago.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558448
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/1...ropping-64-bit-windows-nightly-builds-for-now

Not certain where people are getting their information that firefox is going to magically start releasing an official version for win64, when they don't even give their nightly build any support at all.
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No they didn't you can download them here:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/
 
All you guys wining about them switching to 64bit only are missing one thing!
ALL the current systems on the planet aren't going to magically be forced to switch to 64bit as soon as windows 10 comes out. It will only be the brand new stuff coming out.
All the programers out there will still have the option of making an x86 version of their software. Its not like they are gonna instantly say, hey sorry your shit outta luck x86'ers we don't want your money!
 
Ur_Mom said:
This would be great. Except for you already get a lot of people bitching that Microsoft doesn't support older devices or anything (printers, scanners mostly). People really complain when their older hardware isn't compatible with the newer OS. Dropping 32 bit support would piss them off even more. Yes, it would be great to drop it and get people to move forward. But, the whole "they are forcing me to upgrade" BS would never stop...
Click to expand...

Microsoft doesn't drop support for printers/scanners, the printer/scanner companies do (and honestly, if your printer doesn't work in windows, it's gotta be at least 10 years old (probably older).

For scanners, I'd buy Vuescan. It supports virtually every scanner made.
 
I hope if it comes out it stops my FF from crashing. Its driving me crazy and nothing i have tried stops it from happening (asside from running NoScripts and being unable to actually browse any site ever made).
 
HoffY said:
I hope if it comes out it stops my FF from crashing. Its driving me crazy and nothing i have tried stops it from happening (asside from running NoScripts and being unable to actually browse any site ever made).
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Not sure how so many of you have so many problems with FF.
 
If they do only a 64 bit version of Win10 I'm buying it. If not then it's a complete waste.
 
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