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In a Google Groups discussion, managing engineer Benjamin Smedberg requested coders halt development on nightly builds of its 64-bit Windows distribution.

More @ http://www.techspot.com/news/50887-fire ... ndows.html

It isn't the end of the road for x64. It's off until they can devote some resources to it. They're more concerned with getting Mobile, Firefox OS and Win8 Metro builds improved than a 64-bit Windows build of Firefox. And since the 64-bit build of Firefox is an alpha with more plugin issues, crashes and memory leaks than the 32-bit alpha, it makes more sense to turn the builds off so they aren't getting irrelevant bugs. They're going to turn them on again next year once they're in a better place to manage them. We also need to remember that Firefox's main competition, Chrome, has no Windows 64-bit builds and no roadmap for 64-bit Windows support. IE does. Opera does, too, (but you won't find it unless you visit Opera.com using IE 64-bit).

JohnTHaller wrote:IE does. Opera does, too, (but you won't find it unless you visit Opera.com using IE 64-bit).

http://www.opera.com/browser/download/
Select "More options".

joby_toss wrote:http://www.opera.com/browser/download/
Select "More options".

Quite true. Though getting there is anything but intuitive and most people will never find it. Starting from Opera.com:

Attempt 1. Click the download button, you get 32-bit redirect, no options.

Attempt 2. Click Browsers, under Opera for Computers click Download, you get 32-bit redirect, no options.

Attempt 3. Hover over Browsers, in the popup menu select Download, you get a 32-bit download button, no options.

Attempt 4. Hover over browsers, select Opera for Windows, you get a Download button leading to 32-bit only.

Attempt 5. Hover over browsers, select Opera for Windows, ignore the big Download button and click the Download link in the upper right (Why? I have no idea). Then you finally get the page you linked to above.

I think having an options button next to any of the first 4 attempts as well would make quite a bit more sense.

Use Pale Moon. It's a tweaked version of Firefox on Windows. They have compiled a x64 version.

Their site is down at the moment, but when it's back up:
http://palemoon.org/palemoon-portable.shtml

freakazoid wrote:Use Pale Moon. It's a tweaked version of Firefox on Windows. They have compiled a x64 version.

Their site is down at the moment, but when it's back up:
http://palemoon.org/palemoon-portable.shtml

As all of Firefox's entire source tree has 64-bit-exclusive build bugs (stability, plugin issues, memory leaks, etc), I don't know that Pale Moon could be any more stable, since it is based on Firefox 64-bit and all the bugs included.

Though those who don't hunt around for the options link probably don't know whether they have a 32-bit or 64-bit processor anyway.

guinness wrote:Though those who don't hunt around for the options link probably don't know whether they have 32-bit or 64-bit processor anyway.

True, the interested folks may hunt around. But, as all of the obvious downloads only link to a 32-bit version, a reasonable person would think they don't have a 64-bit version (since none of the other popular downloadable browsers do) unless they'd been specifically told there was one.

I'm surprised that they quote people who have troubles with too many tabs driving them to the memory limit.
Until a month ago I've been using FF3 on a machine with 1 GB RAM. I am well exceeding 100 tabs from time to time and FF has never been near to exceeding my amount of RAM.

m^(2) wrote:I'm surprised that they quote people who have troubles with too many tabs driving them to the memory limit.
Until a month ago I've been using FF3 on a machine with 1 GB RAM. I am well exceeding 100 tabs from time to time and FF has never been near to exceeding my amount of RAM.

Firefox has gotten much better about handling lots of tabs. The fact that when you restart a session it keeps the tabs unloaded (the favicon and title show, but it won't load the page until you click it) helps a lot with memory and with startup time.

JohnTHaller wrote:

m^(2) wrote:I'm surprised that they quote people who have troubles with too many tabs driving them to the memory limit.
Until a month ago I've been using FF3 on a machine with 1 GB RAM. I am well exceeding 100 tabs from time to time and FF has never been near to exceeding my amount of RAM.

Firefox has gotten much better about handling lots of tabs. The fact that when you restart a session it keeps the tabs unloaded (the favicon and title show, but it won't load the page until you click it) helps a lot with memory and with startup time.

For me, it terribly hurts startup time because on practically every startup I touch all my tabs. With delayed loading, I have to wait for each of them separately, which not only takes more time, but also disturbs my workflow. It's easy to disable though.

Just found that on the net...