After posting Firefox Win64 Supports Only Flash I got to thinking I knew I had seen a comment recently in Bugzilla about ‘video changes’ in Firefox for Win64. Looking through the bugs I am following, I found Bug 1181014 which basically was proposal to allow users to download win64 builds from everywhere, not only on the /all/ pages. The /all page referred to here is the Systems & Languages link on the Firefox download/landing page. This link takes the user to page where they can see all the localization builds and supported operating systems of Firefox. The first time I saw the below comment, I really I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Javaun Moradi [:javaun] replied to the inquiry:
Just /all for Fx40. We have more security and video other improvements coming in 41 and beyond, and those are needed to make the browser safer and more usable for a more mainstream audience
So those change made in the Nightly Win64 Firefox 42 must be part of these “security and video other improvements” Javuan was referencing to. But, safer and more usable for a more mainstream audience? I suppose it would be safer eliminating Silverlight and any other media plugins (though they opted to keep Flash), but I don’t see that making Win64 Fx more usable. I almost get the impression they believe that the ‘more mainstream audience’ must not be using these video sites or may be they do and don’t understand the risks they are exposing themselves to in doing so. So let’s protect our users by crippling their browser and forcing them to use Internet Explorer or another browser as they may just as well assume that if the site is broke in the Win64 Fx version it is going to be as well in the 32-bit version without even trying it (even if they still happened to have the 32-bit version of Firefox installed).
I wonder what other nasty surprises…I mean improvements are coming to the Win64 Firefox builds.
