Back in the 1960s, when I became a computer programmer, I recall an engineering manager commenting that the software is always at least a year behind the hardware.

To a degree, that’s got to be true. If there is new hardware, with new capabilities, a programmer needs to have that hardware in hand before writing code to take advantage of it. Otherwise there would be no way to test the code and make sure it works.

But “one year” is a wildly optimistic estimate. A case in point is 64-bit Intel processors. They have been available for about 5 years, and yet very few programs take advantage of this extra power.
Microsoft stepped up to the challenge in releasing a 64-bit version of Windows Vista. But few 64-bit applications have been created. There was a 64-bit Internet Explorer early in the cycle, but it didn’t work very well in my experience, and it never seemed to catch on.

Now Mozilla is working on a 64-bit Firefox browser that promises to take advantage of the power the 64-bit processing offers. And there are quite a few advantages.

They aren’t promising a delivery date, but at least they have recognized the value of the project and have started on it.

Currently, they have gotten far enough along that they are offering beta copies to developers who may want to create add-ons (or “plugins”) for the browser. These plugins have been critical to the acceptance and use of Firefox. Mozilla is wise to build up a strong catalog of plugins for the new 64-bit version before rolling out the browser. Marketers and others have grown to depend on plugins that extend the function of Firefox in specialized ways.

By the way, plugins are very popular. This is a marketing opportunity for an online marketer with a bit of technical understanding. It doesn’t take much, just the grasp of a new and helpful use fr the browser; then you can outsource the actual development.

Infoworld Magazine. has written a good article in which they provide more detail about this new version, and about why it matters to average users, not just tech experts:

Mozilla rolls out dev-only 64-bit Firefox for Windows.

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