SillyDog701

[Antony]

According to Cnet News.com, Firefox for Windows starts 64-bit transition.

Programmer Armen Zambrano Gasparnian announced the first 64-bit Firefox builds for Windows on Friday, offering an FTP site for those who want to download it. But the software isn't for mainstream users yet.

For one thing, there's no installer included yet

Apple's Safari, however, already made the 64-bit jump with Mac OS X 10.6, released in 2009. Internet Explorer on 64-bit Windows is offered in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Google is working on 64-bit Chrome, too, though it appears the Windows version is a lower priority than 64-bit Mac OS X and Linux versions.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100315 Firefox/3.5.9

[Don_HH2K]

It's worth noting that 64-bit Firefox builds for Windows have been publicly available for over four years now, but from my experience reading mozillaZine's forums, they'd largely been written off by the higher-ups as 'useless' and 'nobody would want that'.

Nonetheless, though, community-made patches from mozilla-x86-64.com and Vector64.com for Win64 targets made it into the Mozilla source tree. I believe that Mozilla source has actually been compiling cleanly and without patches on Win64 for a few months now.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100514 Minefield/3.7a5pre

[Antony]

It's worth noting that 64-bit Firefox builds for Windows have been publicly available for over four years now, but from my experience reading mozillaZine's forums, they'd largely been written off by the higher-ups as 'useless' and 'nobody would want that'.

Would you mind adding a bit more detail on this?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10

[Don_HH2K]

Would you mind adding a bit more detail on this?

I don't really remember the specifics, but I do remember lack of plugins being cited as a major reason. Java is the only big thing to have a 64-bit plugin yet, and that's relatively recent (Dec. 2008). There's still no Flash or multimedia support, nor anything like nspluginwrapper like Linux has.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100514 Minefield/3.7a5pre

[Pu7o]

There do exist snapshots of 64-bit builds of Mac OS X Firefox, too.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100531 Minefield/3.7a5pre

[beanboy89]

The Mozilla developers have started building official x64 Firefox builds for Windows. They're available as nightly builds from Mozilla's FTP server.





For some reason, the default install location was in "C:\Program Files (x86)" instead of the regular "Program Files" directory normally used for x64 applications.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; Win64; x64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a6pre) Gecko/20100611 Minefield/3.7a6pre (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[richard mitnick]

I have now two Win 7 64bit machines. I use whatever these guys pump out, I suppose right now it is 32 bit.
I would appreciate it if someone would tell me the advantages of 64 bit for a browser.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.70 Safari/533.4

[Don_HH2K]

The big difference is speed. Mozilla-x86-64.com has performance comparisons of Firefox 3.0 compiled for 32-bit and 64-bit machines. For a more specific example, you can also test a 32-bit nightly against a 64-bit nightly on a few JS benchmarks - there's a good compilation at Dromaeo.com.

At this point, it's likely that some performance patches for x64 haven't hit the trunk yet, so you might get better results from third-party builders that compile with the patches included.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100514 Minefield/3.7a5pre

[iJohnE]

It's also important to note Richard, since Firefox is already a big memory hog making it 64-bit allows it to access all of the available memory on your system as needed. Unlike the regular which has a 3 gig cap off.

So using the 64-bit version will allow you have have more tabs open, and not hinder system performance.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100511 SeaMonkey/2.1a1

[Edward]

I have the 64-bit Linux version of SeaMonkey 2.0.4 installed on my 64-bit system, although it is a contributed build, it works.

Having a 64-bit Firefox available will be a big plus.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SeaMonkey/2.0.4

[iJohnE]

Edward: Do you know if the 64bit builds of Firefox that come as default in the 64-bit version of Ubuntu are Mozilla derived, or community derived?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.38 Safari/533.4

[Edward]

Edward: Do you know if the 64bit builds of Firefox that come as default in the 64-bit version of Ubuntu are Mozilla derived, or community derived?

I don't know, sorry.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SeaMonkey/2.0.4

[iJohnE]

It's okay. I'm going to ask over at the Ubuntu forums.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.38 Safari/533.4

[Edward]

It's okay. I'm going to ask over at the Ubuntu forums.

Good luck. I've just about given up on UF. Tried to get some questions answered, some threads posted more than a week ago, not one reply to any of them...

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 SeaMonkey/2.0.4

[iJohnE]

I just post and hope for a reply, but don't get my hopes up.

Most the time I just do my best to search the forum, and hope someone else had the same problem and better luck with a response.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.38 Safari/533.4