64-bit Browsers: Useless, but not for the reasons you think

I was really stoked when I recently upgraded from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS. I was even more pleased to learn than IE came in a 64-bit flavor. Then, the reality hit me.

Broad-based support for 64-bit browser addons still hasn’t arrived. Silverlight, Flash, Adobe Acrobat, and all their ilk are not 64-bit compatible. So, you can view generic HTML, but that’s pretty much it.

So I have this spiffy 64-bit browser that’s (theoretically) faster and can (theoretically) address far more memory, but it’s fairly useless to me because I can’t view a vast amount of content on the Web.

Sure, there’s content I can view, but having to switch back and forth between 64-bit and 32-bit versions of a browser—and that’s any browser—is a pain: a useless time sink.

So, it looks like it’s back to 32-bit browsers for me. As a web developer, that’s fairly sad, because it means that I won’t be testing any really cool, dynamic “flashy” content in 64-bit browsers for a long time. And that’s fairly sad. User demand is what drives the corporations to get these things fixed, and if we all have to set those 64-bit browsers aside because there’s just no support for them, well, those corporations feel less compelled to provide support for them with any kind of urgency.

It’s a vicious circle, really. They aren’t caught up, we can’t use it, so we go back to older tech, so they relax on the implementation, so it’s not done as quickly as we might like, so we remain entrenched in 32-bit technology longer.

Now, 32-bit technology is fine, if that’s all you really need. But software is not getting any smaller. Nor are operating systems, or corporate computing needs. Eventually, the amount of memory we can address effectively with 32-bit operating systems and software will fail to be sufficient. That day may be far off, but it may not. The truth is, you’re better off being ahead of the curve than behind it. That’s not always possible, but if you can, you should.

In the meanwhile, I’m back to a 32-bit browser, because it’s the only way I can view Silverlight, Flash, and PDF online. Here’s hoping that all changes sometime in the near future.