Liking Minefield Browser on 64-bit Win 7 (64-bit Firefox pre-release build)

Minefield browser description: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minefield/

Download link: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ (download the file called firefox-4.2a1pre.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe or similar)

Consider it a 64-bit version of Firefox for Vista and Windows 7. (I suppose it works on 32-bit systems too, but for most people there would be no point to using it instead of the regular, stable Firefox 4 release).

Why use a pre-release version of Firefox?
If you are running 64-bit Vista or Win7, then you may have wondered about natively 64-bit browsers to go with it. The problem is there are none, except for Internet Explorer, which I can't stand, and then this browser; Minefield. Minefield is similar to Firefox 4 in appearance and features, but I think it's faster - I'm loving it on a 64-bit Win 7 test system that I use occasionally. It's also very stable (no crashes here), and the only drawback I've experienced is that many of my favorite add-ons aren't compatible with Firefox 4.2 pre-release version yet.

If you are using Firefox 4 on a 64-bit system already, then give minefield a go and see if it's faster for you.

 

Are there any advantages of native 64-bit browsers?

 

64bit browsers can give slight advantages in rendering speed (this was evident in IE7 apparently) but so far, no companies are focusing on doing so in their next gen browsers. The lack of 64bit plugins is holding back any form of uptake to give interest to browser developers, which means thats 32bit browsers are currently faster due to having the main focus of development.