Mozilla Outs 64-Bit Firefox For Windows In Development

Hot on the heels of Google making a native 64-bit version of Chrome available back in August, Mozilla has let loose the fact that an official 64-bit build of Firefox is coming. It's about time, too - even Internet Explorer has had a native 64-bit version for quite some time.

To be fair, a 64-bit version of Firefox hasn't been hard to come by up to this point. A visit to the project's nightly channel could have hooked you up with what you needed, and alternative browsers based on Firefox have also made 64-bit available to users. With the fact that an official stable 64-bit Firefox is en route, though, it's a solution that fans of the browser can truly trust.

In the official project wiki, it's seen that 64-bit development has become a big focus, but there's still no hard date of when normal users will be able to snatch such a version. Why is 64-bit so important? Performance is a big reason, as is stability. Interestingly, a note is listed on the page that says a 64-bit version of Firefox could beat the launch of Windows "9", in case Microsoft retires 32-bit versions - which as the Windows 10 Preview highlights, hasn't happened.

If you're wanting to give a 64-bit Firefox a go, now that you know it's an actual focus of Mozilla and a stable version is en route, you can head on over to the nightly page and grab the latest version. The file you'll want is "firefox-XX.X.en-US.win64-x86_64.installer.exe". As the nightly browser is actually called "Nightly" and is installed to its own unique directory, your stable version of Firefox will be left in tact.