Mozilla Dropping 64-Bit Windows Nightly Builds For Now

hypnosec writes "Plans for 64-bit Firefox for Windows have been put on hold by Mozilla in a bid to concentrate more on the 32-bit version. Eliminating the 64-bit nightly builds was proposed by Benjamin Smedberg, a Firefox developer, last week. Some of the reasons Smedberg cited include missing plugins for 64-bit version; lack of windowproc hooking which facilitates smooth functioning of whatever plugins are available; and the inability to work on the crash reports submitted for the 64-bit versions because they were not on high priority. The proposal, it seems, has been accepted as is evident from this bug report." The bug tracking system seems unable to differentiate between 64-bit and 32-bit builds, causing a few issues since Windows 64-bit builds are much buggier. They also intend to reintroduce 64-bit Windows nightlies some time next year.

Comments

Re:FireFox - the browser for people who want less.

[Nadir]

I still think Firefox is one of the browsers to have: of all the browsers developers, they really care about freedom on the web.
Temporarily abandoning the 64bit Windows builds is more of a lack of resources than poor development.
Please also note that Chrome is not available for 64 bit Windows either...

Re:Blame Ignorance

[aristotle-dude]

OSX didn't didn't magically recompile/emulate 64bit code. They embedded both 32bit and 64bit code into a single binary and selected the right one based on the target architecture; it wasn't free.

Feel free to continue pulling bullshit out of your ass. A 64bit binary will operate on 32bit Snow Leopard on a 64bit machine. This was done to support early 64bit intel machines running Leopard/Snow Leopard because they booted by default into 32bit OS X to avoid issues with missing third party drivers. You could force it to reboot into 64bit mode but some drivers for third party hardware would not be available. Anything like a "driver" had to be run in the appropriate kernel but applications compiled for 64bit could run on the 32bit kernel.