64-bit FireFox cannot be seen again

Mozilla quietly cut down the 64-bit Windows version of FireFox, and it is estimated that it will disappoint 50% testers who use it. Mozilla's engineering department manager Benjamin Smedberg posted a "Close win64 creation" announcement on the Google panel for "mozilla. dev. planning" last Friday. By Wednesday, Smedberg indicates that Windows 64-bit FireFox will not be able to repeat the day.

The Mozilla manager listed the reasons for splitting the FireFox branch of Win64 as follows:

• Many plug-ins do not provide a 64-bit version.

• Available plug-ins cannot work normally in FireFox, because we have not implemented WindowsProc hooking and other things, which means that hangs will become more common.

• The 64-bit version crash report submitted by the user has a low priority because we are doing other things.

• This will make them feel (being) treated as second-class.

• The inability to easily differentiate the compilation of the 32-bit or 64-bit version in the top crash (topcrash) report and other reports makes the stability team frustrated when distributing data. We basically ignore the entire set of "topcrash" because they only appear in the 64-bit version. (See bug811051)

Some people support this decision, but more people disagree. However, Smedberg has demonstrated his determination and finally announced:

"Thanks to everyone involved in this branch. Considering the existing information, I still decided to stop building Win64 FireFox. Please let us consider ending this topic unless more important information needs to be submitted ".

Then he published the notice on Bugzilla:

Everyone discussed in the newsgroup should stop creating and testing Win64, including the following subtasks. I have no specific error to submit, but you may want to break this point:

* Stop creating a win64 nightlies branch.

* A custom update is provided to send existing win64 users back to Win32.

* Stop "hourly work" for win64 construction in mozilla-central and other branches ".

* Disable try/trychooser in win64.

This bug is not a question about the decision that has been made. If you have some critical data (critical data) that you want to reflect this decision, post it to mozilla. dev. apps. firefox section.

We can't talk much about it either. If you are interested, you can follow up on the official version of Mozilla.