Mozilla has begun offering highly experimental builds of a 64-bit version of Firefox.

Given that Mac OS X, Windows 7 and most versions of Linux are all available in 64-bit, it makes sense that Firefox joins browsers like Safari and Internet Explorer in offering 64-bit builds.

Fans of 64-bit computing might know that unofficial 64-bit builds of Firefox have been around for some time, and many 64-bit Linux distros also offer 64-bit builds of Firefox. However, these packages (which were posted over the long weekend) are the first official releases sanctioned by Mozilla.

For now, the new 64-bit Firefox is for Windows machines only. Mozilla is planning to make official 64-bit builds available for multiple operating systems when Firefox 4 is released later this year. However, the company says that at this point, these builds are just for experimentation and testing.

You will only be able to run a select few add-ons in 64-bit mode, as there are only a handful available. The biggest downer is that there’s no 64-bit version of Flash Player for Windows 7. There is a beta version of 64-bit Flash available for Linux that you could run with one of those aforementioned Linux builds. Though having tested it on Fedora, we would not recommend it for general use.

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