Firefox/win64
Firefox Desktop: Win64
See background summary, market analysis, goals and objectives, here.
Goal
To Release Win64 in GA before the end of 2015 in order to offer our users better experience with improvements in stability, performance, and security. Deliver these benefits in a phased roll-out and avoid the breakage for our General Audience. This means opt-in only until we are confident that we have achieved parity with Win32 for our users.
What have we accomplished so far to reach it?
√ Solved test bustage
√ Merged to Nightly prior to the 10th anniversary launch and rode the trains to Firefox 38 Aurora Developer Edition
√ Win64 builds are currently available, here
Next Steps (as of Q1 2015)
Although building
| Status | Installer Payload | Release Channel | Date | Target Audience | Plugin Status | Addon Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [DONE] | Full Installer | Firefox 38 Dev Edition | Launched Feb 27th | 1% Developers and Gamers | 64-Bit Flash (unsupported) | Add-On Compat = clean slate | Available for language repacks only found, here so it's truly an opt-in experience. NB: Moz.org button displayed on the main Dev Edition page and the beta page doesn't offer Win32 and Win64 in parallel, it auto detects so the user can't install Win64 and revert to Win32 should they want to. |
| [PROPOSED] | Full Installer | Firefox 39 Dev Edition | Launch April 3 | 1% Developers and Gamers | 64-Bit Flash (unsupported) | Add-On Compat = clean slate | Available for language repacks only, found here same reason as above. |
| [PROPOSED] | Stub Installer | Firefox 40 Dev Edition | Launch May 12 | 1% Developers and Gamers | 64-Bit Flash (unsupported?) | Add-On Compat for top non-malware addons = Outreach Begins | Need to decide if auto-detect (not opt-in) is ok or if we need Moz.org team to modify functionality for https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/. |
| [PROPOSED] | Stub Installer | Firefox 41 Dev Edition | Launch June 30 | 1% Developers and Gamers | 64-Bit Flash (unsupported?) EME? | Add-On Compat = testing | Need to decide if it can ride trains to beta |
| [PROPOSED] | Stub Installer | Firefox 41 Beta | Launch August 11, first release of Q3 | Beta Audience | What plugin compat do we need for Beta? EME? | Add-On Compat = testing | Need to decide if it can ride trains to GA |
Our Users & Go-To Market Plan
Speaker: Javaun Moradi
64 bit is incredibly exciting to those of us who understand what it offers in stability, performance, and security. We're the minority. Most of the world has no idea what 64 bit means. They can already do everything they want to do online. Many will only notice 64 bit if their experience breaks. Our job is to deliver the benefits -- even if they're invisible -- and avoid the breakage.
Who is the user, and what problem do we aim to solve for them?
- Early adopters: 1%-ish Power users (gamers, developers, security folks, high memory users, etc) who know what 64 bit is and why they want it
- Everyone else:
- Users who don't use plugins or binary add-ons and aren't at risk if we drop support
- Users who have plugins/add-ons that may break in 64
Games industry focus: We need to show them that we’re launching 64 so that they see we’re serious, it’s coming, and they can start planning to ship games for this ecosystem (browser based games). This aligns with our objective #1. We largely suspect an announcement alone satisfies the games folks. A limited rollout to the 1% satisfies this market need and would allow them to start working.
Clean Slate Approach
We have a chance to clean house. We recommend stopping support for most plugins. We must support Flash and Silverlight use cases, especially for streaming video. We recommend retiring binary add-on support entirely. This will wipe away a lot of browser hijacking, instability, and malware. We should reach out to top add-on developers with advance notice of our intentions. Additionally, many ESR users also rely on binary add-ons. We should broach this idea with them as well.
Go to Market
- We'll first launch with an opt-in (new download) targeting the 1%. This puts us in the game and satisfies game developer needs.
- Limited roll out will help us gauge overall benefits in speed, stability and security and inform our decision for updating mainstream users.
- Users without legacy binary add-ons and old plugins have the next easiest migration to 64 bit.
- Auto-update for all users will be necessary at some point, but with maximum care to avoiding breakage for those running old plugins or binary add-ons.
Issues & Risks
Speaker: All
- Are we sure that Gamers will be ok without Flash support for the first rev?
- We don't know if 64-bit Flash will be more stable than 32-bit Flash. If we ship and stability takes a nose dive, we need a mitigation plan.
Backlog
No results.
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| Role | Contact |
|---|---|
| Product Management (Decision Maker) | Javaun Moradi |
| Product Manager, Platform | Martin Best |
| Firefox Engineering (Decision Maker) | Benjamin Smedburg |
| Firefox Installer Engineering | Robert Strong |
| Release Management | Lawrence Mandel |
| Release Engineering | Chris Atlee |
| Quality Engineering (Decision Maker) | Robert Kaiser |
| Engineering Program Management | Erin Lancaster |
| Add Ons | Jorge Villalobos |