Minefield: Firefox 64bit – Still early…

Hardware, Software
Posted by
March 11, 2009

image thumb4 Minefield: Firefox 64bit – Still early… software hardware I guess I’m among the early few that have a 64-bit operating system. While I can benefit from the speed and the additional resources, I have to put up with the shortcomings of various software providers.

I was looking to take advantage of my system and it’s resources, so I recently downloaded Mozilla’s version of the 64-bit browser called Minefield. It’s an early version of Firefox 64-bit… surely it’ll eventually be renamed to Firefox as it should.

Installing Minefield is no different than installing Firefox, but Minefield obviously performs a lot better in its native environment, but people like myself can’t take full advantage of a web browser like this because Adobe doesn’t provide a 64-bit version of their flash player. This makes using Minefield a problem in most cases.

I can’t watch interactive or rich media, and I can’t watch videos from YouTube. I’m not interested in playing flash games online, but if I were, this would not be my browser.

While Minefield performs outstandingly well in a 64-bit environment, the typical niceties that everyone has grown to love with Firefox is just not available with Minefield; the adoption of this browser just hasn’t saturated the market yet. The plug-ins that everyone has grown to enjoy, a lot of them are not available with the 64-bit version of Firefox.

64-bit hardware and 64-bit Operating System are starting to flood the market and represent the majority of the systems are being sold now. My estimation I would predict that within the next two years were going to start seeing a lot more 64-bit options available to users like myself.

Albeit a bit frustrating, I just wish that software providers would be more proactive than reactive.

Thanks for reading!

pixel Minefield: Firefox 64bit – Still early… software hardware
  • mooo

    There is a 64bit version of flash available… albeit a beta for linux… http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

    • http://www.lehsys.com Larry Henry

      Yes, but facing the Operating System majority; it’s ass backwards. They are supporting Linux first and then Windows… Normally the most popular Operating System is supported first. Nothing against Linux, it’s just odd.

      Thanks,
      L. Henry Jr.
      http://www.lehsys.com

  • Anon

    I thought Minefield was the name for the nightly trunk builds of new versions of Firefox (3.1 these days, I believe). Is it really also the name for 64 bit Firefox, or is it just that there will be a 64 bit version at the next release?

    • http://www.lehsys.com Larry Henry

      Minefield is the development code for Firefox, just as Shredder is the code development for Thunderbird. If you lookin the installation folder it’s actually Firefox.exe.

      Thanks for reading!
      Enjoy.

  • EdwinC

    I just installed it last night, but when i tried to open Firefox (32bit), another Minefield window opened.
    Both are named firefox.exe though in separate folders.
    I’ve read that i can run 32 and 64 bit independently…anyone got ideas?
    Thanks in advance!

  • http://www.lehsys.com Larry Henry

    Minefield and Firefox can be installed at the same time, but they can’t run at the same time. The EXE’s are named exactly the same, so only one instance of a program can be running at once. So, installed at the same time, but not running at the same time.

    Hope this helps.

    Thanks for reading!

  • EdwinC

    Thanks Larry. As I suspected…
    With my limited tech knowledge, I renamed FF 64bit to Minefield but I don’t think Vista liked it. Given it was late at night, I only remember changing the name back to firefox.

    Am also trying IE 64bit and wonder how they compare.

    Thanks for the reply.

  • Cristian Duguet

    @Larry Henry

    You have to consider it was also the first development of adobe for linux, Adobe flashplayer 10. The same development team made it possible for amd64.

  • http://www.lehsys.com Larry Henry

    I still find it interesting that while a low percentage of Linux users exist in the market place [and I've Ubuntu dual booted] for the desktop, Adobe is not developing for the Operating System that’s on 90% of the worlds PC’s.

    It would seem, perhaps, they are mucking with Linux just to bang out some bugs.

    Thanks for reading!

    Thanks,
    L. Henry Jr.
    http://www.lehsys.com