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Well considering Carbon is a deprecated API, eventually Firefox would have no choice but to go to Cocoa. And Firefox already works in 64-bit builds of Linux. We might see 64-bit Mac builds by 3.6 if we've lucky :)
What? Firefox moved to Cocoa with the 3.0 release over a year ago...
 
What? Firefox moved to Cocoa with the 3.0 release over a year ago...

Unfortunately, that is not true. It was a goal of FF3.0 release, but was never fully achieved. I can't find the bugzilla report right now, but FF3.5 is about 95% Cocoa. http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=23962 is one post from 2008 states Mac Cocoa probably won't be ready by 1.9.1.

I could be totally wrong though. I haven't grep'd the source for carbon calls or anything like that :p
 
Unfortunately, that is not true. It was a goal of FF3.0 release, but was never fully achieved. I can't find the bugzilla report right now, but FF3.5 is about 95% Cocoa. http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=23962 is one post from 2008 states Mac Cocoa probably won't be ready by 1.9.1.

I could be totally wrong though. I haven't grep'd the source for carbon calls or anything like that :p

printing dialog, if i remember correctly, is still in carbon.

all in all, its cocoa enough, more is good, but no more is not bad neither. Apple hasn't killed carbon after all, and firefox works fine on OSX.

I guess when you originally stated "eventually firefox has to move to cocoa", that does sounds like you were saying firefox is still largely in carbon, which is obviously false.
 
all in all, its cocoa enough, more is good, but no more is not bad neither. Apple hasn't killed carbon after all, and firefox works fine on OSX.

Apple has clearly killed Carbon. It's a deprecated API, 32-bit only. Originally Apple stated that both Carbon and Cocoa would be 64-bit, then Apple backtracked and said only Cocoa.

Now even Adobe is moving from Carbon to Cocoa to take advantage of 64-bit x86 features (more general purpose registers, more addressable memory, etc).

I guess when you originally stated "eventually firefox has to move to cocoa", that does sounds like you were saying firefox is still largely in carbon, which is obviously false.

For starters, the title of this thread is "64 bit Firefox on Leopard", Carbon is 32-bit only. Even if 1 Carbon call exists in the Firefox code, no 64-bit Firefox. On top if it, 64-bit Firefox for Windows and Linux already exist, leaving the remaining leftover Carbon calls the show stopper for 64-bit on OSX.

Carbon is deprecated, so yes, eventually Carbon will cease to exist on Mac OS X, and firefox will have to eliminate all Carbon.
 
printing dialog, if i remember correctly, is still in carbon.

all in all, its cocoa enough, more is good, but no more is not bad neither. Apple hasn't killed carbon after all, and firefox works fine on OSX.

I guess when you originally stated "eventually firefox has to move to cocoa", that does sounds like you were saying firefox is still largely in carbon, which is obviously false.

It's unlikely Carbon will get much in the way of new features, whereas Cocoa will.

More than Firefox, though, I'm wanting Photoshop in 64-bit. I wouldn't be surprised if we had to wait for CS6, though.
 
Stop saying useless...

I read through this whole thing and is amazing how useless is used so freely. For some, 64 bit is a clear alternative when handling servers and such, that is why the default on the server side of Snow Leopard is 64-bit, which means that if I'm managing a server and I want to use Firefox, I'm stuck with 32 bit version until the 64 bit is readily available. The future is 64 bit, and we need to test and re-test, so is not that useless to work fast on a 64 bit edition of Firefox. Thankfully that's already on the works, so I have to say that I'm super excited to see the release sooner rather than later. My 2 cents, Luis.
 
Namely, the ability to run Java 1.6 in Firefox for Mac. Java 1.6 cannot run in 32-bit applications at all. I discovered this all when Runescape (a java game) suddenly stopped working in Firefox. Apparently a recent update has required 1.6 — and there is no version for Java 1.5 available. My only recourse is to play it in Safari until such time as a 64-bit Firefox for Mac is released, by somebody, somewhere.

Safari is not executed as a 64-bit application - the activity monitor is not displaying something like this in the kind column.
The Java Preferences pane is also pointing out that Java 6 SE (the JRE) is only available for 64-bit browsers. J2SE 5.0 is used in 32-bit browsers - this includes Safari.
Java on OS X Snow Leopard is version 1.6 in 32 bit and 64 bit as you can see in the Java preferences. The 64 bit is the primary JRE, the 32 bit is the secondary. There is no 1.4 or 1.5 version. If you have only a 64 bit version than either something went wrong with your installation or you are booting the unnecessary 64-bit kernel.

Safari is by default a 64 bit application but you can force it to run in 32 bit mode in the Get info dialog. I did so it still is able to run some 32 bit plugins I have.

Runescape runs fine in my 32 bit Firefox 3.5 with a 32 bit JRE 1.6 on a 64 bit capable Mac mini with the 64 and 32 bit capable Snow Leopard running with the 32 bit kernel. As well as various other 32 and 64 bit software I have :) In other words: check your configuration because something most definitely is wrong with it. Somehow Firefox seems to have some problems with Java (which is not uncommon in Firefox btw).
 
Safari in SL is 64-bit, but may be run in 32-bit mode for compatibility with plugins (like FOLX download manager)

Gecko in FF stable is carbon- services do not work on rendered text

Gecko in minefield (FF Alpha) seems to be cocoa- services do work on rendered text

I use MineField & it's pretty stable

I don't think 64bit FF will be to far off :)

Camino 2 should also be 64bit, because it's always been cocoa (I think)
 
While Snow Leopard does in fact have a 32-bit java one thing that is oft overlooked is that having all 64-bit apps will eliminate the need to load 32-bit copies of all the system libraries. The memory saved by not loading the various system libraries far outweighs the relatively small amounts of memory increase caused by the move 64-bit from 32-bit.
 
I don't think 64bit FF will be to far off :)

Camino 2 should also be 64bit, because it's always been cocoa (I think)

They have already a running 64bit Firefox test version
http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/64-bit-firefox-for-mac-os-x-up-and-running/
and we will see probably soon special 64bit nightlies.

It will be probably only for Minefield with Gecko 1.9.3 = Firefox 3.7
and we will see probably never a Firefox 3.6 64bit version.

---

Camino 2.0 on the other hand use still Gecko 1.9.0 (Firefox 3.0 use as well 1.9.0, Firefox 3.5 use for example Gecko 1.9.1 and Firefox 3.6 will use Gecko 1.9.2)

A Camino 64bit version will need as well Gecko 1.9.3 and even a Camino 2.1 nightly use still only 1.9.0 = a Camino 64bit is far far away
 
Hi,
some news about it - from: http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/64-bit-firefox-performance-on-mac-os-x/

{October 1, 2009} 64-bit Firefox Performance on Mac OS X

I used standalone talos to test a 64-bit Mac OS X build against a 32-bit build. I created the two builds using the same optimized configuration and the same mercurial revision. Since only the 32-bit build can load any of the plugins that ship with Mac OS X 10.6 I removed all plugins from the plugin search paths. This way the 32-bit build wasn’t hurt by having to deal with more plugins than the 64-bit build. The tests were done on Mac OS X 10.6.1.

Ts: 64-bit is 6.5% faster
Tp: 64-bit is 6.3% faster
Twinopen: 64-bit is 5.1% faster
Tjss: 64-bit is 8.7% faster
Tsunspider: basically a tie, 64-bit is 0.2% faster

I’m not sure what all of the factors contributing to these results are yet, but it seems Apple’s investment in optimizing the OS and developer tools for x86_64 paid off.
-----

and someone has already created a third party test version:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=1513655

Works fine, but Plug-ins like Flash or Quicktime don’t work

Cheers
 
64-bit apps can be faster on Intel because the 64-bit mode on Intel CPUs has more registers.
 
No, I don't believe so.

Pretty sure it actually is now.

As far as the benefits to having a 64-bit browser go, I don't there'd be a big difference. I can tell you one thing, until those lazy bastards at Adobe decide to actually get some work done and release a well-built 64-bit version of Flash, having a 64-bit browser doesn't really matter at this point.
 
As far as the benefits to having a 64-bit browser go, I don't there'd be a big difference. I can tell you one thing, until those lazy bastards at Adobe decide to actually get some work done and release a well-built 64-bit version of Flash, having a 64-bit browser doesn't really matter at this point.

Having a 64-bit browser is supposed to mean that when 32-bit Flash implodes, it doesn't take down the entire browser with it, which I think matters since Adobe coders are also evidently lazy bastards. ;)
 
As long as Flash can't run in-process in a 64 bit browser Firefox won't ship an official 64 bit build. Out of process plug-ins are scheduled for Firefox 3.7 which would allow Flash to run in a dedicated 32 bit process (like Safari does).
 
first, firefox is a web browser, 64 bits does not make visible difference.
if you have a virtual machine like vmware running on your system i suggest that you don't go with SL without 8gb memory
 
Having a 64-bit browser is supposed to mean that when 32-bit Flash implodes, it doesn't take down the entire browser with it, which I think matters since Adobe coders are also evidently lazy bastards. ;)

What? 64 bit has nothing to do with sandboxing, that can be done in 32bit mode as well. You are confusing it with something else. In Firefox 3.7 (will be renamed to 4.0), there will be sandboxing for each tab and plugin like the way it works in Safari and Chrome. That is the precise reason that flash can run in 32 bit and won't take down the browser since flash process isn't intermixed with the browser's process.

Actually, it does.
I highly doubt 64bit is the reason behind the performance gains here. It is more likely due to the optimizations that Apple has done to the x86-64 compiler that is not in 32bit compiler.
 
Why is there not a separate 64 bit version of Firefox for use on Leopard?

Well, developers have realized that the real money is in Windows, so they shine a deaf ear to anything Mac related.

I have come to accept this, thats why I have a Windows PC AND a Mac.

But, I mainly use the mac to rest my feet on in the living room since they are inferior machines.
 
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