Mozilla this week suspended development of a 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows, citing add-on incompatibilities and low priority for the project.
In a
message posted to Bugzilla, the company's bug- and change-tracking database, Benjamin Smedberg, a developer with consulting firm Mozdev, and a regular contributor to the open-source browser, said that the organization was suspending, perhaps for some time, the work on a 64-bit version.
"Please stop building windows 64 builds and tests," Smedberg wrote on Bugzilla Wednesday. In the same message, he told commenters the decision had been made, and not to argue it on Bugzilla, a warning that several people ignored.
The x64 edition of Firefox for Windows had been stalled in the build channel Mozilla calls "Nightlies," a label for the unpolished daily versions, for months. Mozilla maintains three general-public build channels -- Aurora, analogous to an alpha; Beta; and Release -- but the x64 browser never made it to Aurora, much less the more stable Beta or final code.
