Kizzume
11-27-2012, 07:47 PM
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57553467-93/mozilla-quietly-ceases-firefox-64-bit-development/
Mozilla engineering manager Benjamin Smedberg has asked developers to stop nightly builds for Firefox versions optimized to run on 64-bit versions of Windows.
A developer thread posted on the Google Groups mozilla.dev.planning discussion board, titled "Turning off win64 builds" by Smedberg proposed the move.
Claiming that 64-bit Firefox is a "constant source of misunderstanding and frustration," the engineer wrote that the builds often crash, many plugins are not available in 64-bit versions, and hangs are more common due to a lack of coding which causes plugins to function incorrectly. In addition, Smedberg argues that this causes users to feel "second class," and crash reports between 32-bit and 64-bit versions are difficult to distinguish between for the stability team.
This is disappointing for me, as I use a 64 bit windows 7, and as the 32bit version of Firefox works alright, it still has the 2gb memory limitations of a 32bit program, and I tend to max out the browser a lot in that area. I was just looking up to see if there were any official versions only to find out that the whole thing had been discontinued. Oh well. Maybe Google will make a 64bit version of Chrome, as much as I don't want GoogleUpdater running on my system. It'll probably happen eventually, I'm just very disappointed in the Mozilla team for dropping 64bit.
Mozilla engineering manager Benjamin Smedberg has asked developers to stop nightly builds for Firefox versions optimized to run on 64-bit versions of Windows.
A developer thread posted on the Google Groups mozilla.dev.planning discussion board, titled "Turning off win64 builds" by Smedberg proposed the move.
Claiming that 64-bit Firefox is a "constant source of misunderstanding and frustration," the engineer wrote that the builds often crash, many plugins are not available in 64-bit versions, and hangs are more common due to a lack of coding which causes plugins to function incorrectly. In addition, Smedberg argues that this causes users to feel "second class," and crash reports between 32-bit and 64-bit versions are difficult to distinguish between for the stability team.
This is disappointing for me, as I use a 64 bit windows 7, and as the 32bit version of Firefox works alright, it still has the 2gb memory limitations of a 32bit program, and I tend to max out the browser a lot in that area. I was just looking up to see if there were any official versions only to find out that the whole thing had been discontinued. Oh well. Maybe Google will make a 64bit version of Chrome, as much as I don't want GoogleUpdater running on my system. It'll probably happen eventually, I'm just very disappointed in the Mozilla team for dropping 64bit.