14 DAY TRIAL // The 64-bit version of Firefox is still on the table after so many years of development, and Mozilla is currently working on the features that will be included in it, with new evidence now showing that support for Silverlight is very likely to be offered.
Microsoft’s Silverlight will thus be supported in 64-bit versions of Firefox, but any other specifics are not yet available for the moment, so it’s hard to predict when exactly this version is slated to arrive.
ffextensionguru.com speculates that it could come as part of Firefox 44, which is currently in the development branch and is expected to arrive in January 2016. In the meantime, Mozilla will launch Firefox 43 on December 15, but it’s highly unlikely to include Silverlight support, given the fact that it’s supposed to debut in approximately 3 weeks.
Project Shumway
In the meantime, Mozilla’s still working on Project Shumway, its very own technology that would help replace Flash Player and make it possible for users of Firefox to open Flash content found online without the need for Adobe’s solution.
Flash Player is said to be one of the most vulnerable software solutions currently on the market, and this is one of the reasons large companies are one by one giving up on it, looking for alternatives that would help keep everything more secure on users’ computers.
Mozilla is one of these companies, and Project Shumway makes this reality. Work on the project started in 2012, and it’s based on an earlier endeavor that was called Gordon. Basically, what this technology does is to render Flash files using an HTML5 engine, which is not only more stable and secure but also faster.
Flash will continue to be supported in the next versions of Firefox, though, and adding Silverlight support on the feature list certainly helps, especially because the 64-bit version is supposed to offer faster and more secure browsing.