Why there is still no official 64 bit Firefox?

Okay so this is really beyond my understanding. 64bit is where most new computers are at right now. Yet there is still no official 64 bit firefox.
Sure there is Waterfox, Palemoon, etc and other flavors. But how come Firefox guys can't come up with official 64 bit version of their browser

 

There are official builds for 64 bit..on Linux and Mac since 4.0. There were Nightly builds for 64 bit, but I don't know if that's true anymore. Why they can support 64 bit on ((relatively)) less used operating systems and not on Windows is beyond me. Why they've taken so long to even try I have no idea. Maybe it'll come when Chrome goes 64, which is also looking like next to never.

 

So FF team decided to be follower instead of being the leader in the market? Seriously... I hope IE guy are not sending them cakes every 6 weeks.

 

Actually, work on 64bit Chrome for Windows (already done on Linux) just started a few days ago.

Mozilla decided that 64bit Firefox was not providing the benefits they'd hoped, it wasn't worth the development time/ dedication.

64bit is not magic - you don't suddenly gain speed. Especially for something like a browser, where pointer bloat can actually be quite an issue (due to complex structures of DOM trees).

 

I open 10-15 tabs simultaneously all the time and don't have any problems.

I fail to see what is the magic about 64-Bit Browsers, heck, not even 64-bit Office or Photoshop is need IMO

Just the OS is enough to make use of all my RAM

 

There are a lot of benefits of 64bit in terms of performance and security - not just the ability to address more bits.

 

Seriously guys. This depends what kind of set up you are running. For those of us that don't have 8 or 4 or 2 cores, current 32bit browsers can be slower than 64 bit browser. I have seen this first hand on my laptop. 64 bit native applications run much faster than 32 bit.
My 64 bit Pale Moon beats 32 bit Chrome any time of the day. On the other hand on my desktop it makes no difference whatsoever.
So yes there can be huge improvement in speed but not just on all set ups.

Pale Moon 64 bit >>> faster >>> Firefox 32 bit

 

I'm just relaying what the Moz devs said, the performance benefits did not outweigh the development costs.

It's worth noting that Pale Moon is not just 64bit. It's 64bit with instruction set enhancements. Your typical 64bit Firefox won't be SSE enhanced (which is dumb, all browsers should be SSE2 enhanced at this point, anyone on a p3 can't run one anyways) let alone SSE4.2.

 

Wouldn't a 64 bit browser have security advantages over a 32 bit?

 

I'm not sure I understand Mozilla, what were they hoping for that didn't work out? I'm glad Chrome 64 is actively being worked on though, I look forward to that.

 

Waterfox is based on Firefox if you want a 64 build Firefox, install it.

 

I said official FireFox. Waterfox is unofficial, I already got Pale Moon.

 

Waterfox isn't exactly unofficial. I think it's considered officially supported. But compiling for 64bit is different from having developers in the back optimizing for it.

@Daveski,

Yes, especially on Windows 8 if they opt into High Entropy ASLR, which is only available for 64bit processes. Even without that the ASLR would be improved.

 

Have you ever noticed (at least with a SSD and enough RAM) that moving from one Wilders forum to another is almost imperceptible? Heck sometimes I feel it actually is. Anyway, I tried Waterfox last week and noticed a slight lag from Wilders to Wilders. I know, I know that isn't scientific but I uninstalled it!

 

Firefox will always be held back by its single process architecture. Page load speeds are very similar to Chrome at this point, it's the UI lagging that I had issues with (I used 64bit Firefox for a week).

 

UI in firefox is not lagging to me. I always install firefox 2.0 theme, which is the original no nonsense UI. Simple bookmark drop down menu and im a happy surfer.

 

I installed Waterfox when it first came out and made it my default browser. After running it for quite some time, I don't see any advantage over FF 32x, and it is a little sloppy. I started using FF again and think it runs a little crisper than Waterfox and updates are more forthcoming. I have made FF my default again.

 

It may be that the Linux port is just slow, and that exposes the issues or exacerbates them.

 

So, as an example, how much safer would Waterfox be over Firefox on Win 7?

 

On Windows 7? Depends on the attack. There are more than a few ways to get past ASLR on Windows 7 due to some known static addresses (VirtualAlloc() doesn't randomize, UserSharedData is static). If an attack makes use of one of those it won't matter whether you're using Waterfox or Firefox, 32bit or 64bit. If the attack relies on bypassing ASLR through some other means, like spraying the heap/ some form of bruteforcing, than 64bit would make an attack like that far less reliable/ statistically unlikely.

On Windows 8 ASLR seems (so far) to be far better, and the known data leaks have been removed. This leaves attackers without the option to bypass it with simple ROP chains that could be used with, for example, UserSharedData, but now they either have to find a new attack, a way to data leak (most likely), or go for heap spraying and the like.

 

OK. I doubt I'll be upgrading to Win 8, so I'll have to take my chances. I haven't been infected on three computers for four years now, so I think I will be OK. I did once succumb to a drive-by flash-vert trojan on a Russian site. I was using SeaMonkey's (Google) translator. It was Google who notified me it had detected malware. Luckily I had SAS & MBAM (on demand).

 

I don't think any Firefox remote code execution vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild for a while, probably a year or two. I wouldn't worry too much, on a Windows 7 machine there will be a difference but it's not a big deal.

 

What about Vista?

 

I think Vista and 7 have the same ASLR, basically. There was an issue with Vista's ASLR way at the beginning but I think they fixed that.

XP doesn't have any ASLR, so it's not even a matter of finding a static address, they're all static.

 

That's OK then.

I miss XP. Plenty still use it. An XP theme for Win 8 would sell like hot cakes I reckon LOL!