MCBastos wrote:
Interviewed by CNN on 13/02/2012 13:01, gjikkl told the world:
Yes please make a 64-bit version, is also good for Mozilla, native
support from Windows 64-bits, take advantage of 64-bit environment, no
WoW64 emulator, everyone is moving to 64-bit since is the future, come
on people, what stops you from doing it? I suggest you keep the 32-bit
version for about 4 more years, when i think 32-bit will be phased out
and it'll only remain as a WoW64 antique or 32-bit OSs on old machines.
Micro$oft has officially said that Windows 8 will be the last hybrid
32-/64-bit Windows.
Regards
I understand it's in the roadmap for the whole Mozilla family (and
Firefox does have a x64 build in testing), but in fact the decision to
move to x64 is a bit complex.
The first thing, of course, is that as long as there are people needing
to use the x86 version (for whatever reason), there will be two versions
to maintain. Yes, they will be very similar, but still, it does demand
resources.
Then, there is the matter of add-ons. The Firefox people have looked
into this and concluded that at present there is no practical way for a
x64 browser use x86 plug-ins. As I understand it (and I'm not a
developer), it *might* be possible after Project Electrolysis (rewriting
Gecko/Firefox as a multithreaded application) is final. But Electrolysis
was temporarily put on hold to focus on other aspects of development. So
it might be a while.
Besides plugins, extensions with binary components would probably need
separate x86 and x64 versions too. So a x64 browser would have less
options for add-ons in general. (In fact, Vista and Win7 ship with
*both* the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of IE, and the 32-bit version is
the *default* one, exactly for that reason)
Yes, Flash, Java and Silverlight do have x64 plug-ins available. These
three DO cover the lion's share of users needs. But there are lots of
other niche plugins that have no x64 version and might be missed by
users. Neither the Firefox nor the Seamonkey teams are eager to drop
those users with niche needs.
We hope to start creating experimental win64 builds within the year. But
no promises yet.
We certainly will not release a release version of SeaMonkey on win64
before Firefox does.
--
~Justin Wood (Callek)
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