Experimental Firefox with multitouch support for Mac OS X

By Percy Cabello

Mozilla’s Edward Lee has released an experimental build of Firefox 3.1 pre-Beta 2 with reviewed patches by Tom Dyas, that bring support for multitouch gestures on the latest MacBooks’ (*) multitouch trackpads.

Implemented gestures are:

  • swipe: move three fingers on the trackpad on any direction
  • twist: rotate two fingers
  • pinch: move two fingers away or closer to each other

These are the actions you can perform with the different gestures:

  • Swipe Left: Go back in history [press Cmd to open it in a tab]
  • Swipe Right: Go forwards in history
  • Swipe Up: Go to the top of the page
  • Swipe Down: Go to the end of the page
  • Pinch Together: Zoom out
  • Pinch Apart: Zoom in
  • Twist Right: Next tab
  • Twist Left: Previous tab

Edward warns that this is an experimental build and there has been no word on whether this will make it for Firefox 3.1 (it’s definitely not a blocker but could get in if it is deemed safe enough and time allows proper QA).

You can get the experimental Firefox 3.1 with Mac OS X gestures support (in case it is not obvious, Mac OS X only) from Mozilla try build servers.

(*) Supported MacBooks include: MacBook Pro from this year (either early-2008 model or the new late-2008 ones), MacBook Air (both models from 2008), MacBook from late 2008 (the new aluminum ones)

Posted on October 22, 2008 - 10:29 am || More on Articles

Comments

CB

October 22, 2008 10:29 am

That was and is also easily achievable using the MultiClutch extension which can also be used for multitouch gestures in other applications.
http://is.gd/4ytp

Reply

Percy CabelloOctober 22nd, 2008 at 11:01 am

Thanks CB. I must note however that it’s not a Firefox extension but a stand-alone Mac OS X app, which makes it possible to enable multitouch support for other applications.

Here’s the link: http://wcrawford.org/2008/02/28/everytime-i-think-about-you-i-touch-my-cell/

Reply

GeekShadow

October 22, 2008 10:29 am

Instead of building a firefox, it would have been better to make an extension.

Reply

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Gen Kanai

October 22, 2008 10:29 am

Percy, you should clarify that Ed is merely reporting the work that Tom Dyas did. Ed is not the developer here, Tom Dyas is.

Reply

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Johan

October 23, 2008 10:29 am

Or.. You can use Safari which already has multitouch support plus alot of other features such as scrolling a page even though its not highlighted…

Reply

RuudOctober 25th, 2008 at 3:44 am

That isn’t specific to Safari you know. Gnome, kde, enlightenment and probably most other mayor linux desktop managers support that. It all depends on how the desktop manager uses scrolling actions and to which window it sends them to.

Reply

JohanOctober 25th, 2008 at 8:47 am

Have’nt said that it’s specific to Safari I just meant why install this build when you can use what already came with your mac?

Reply

MeNovember 18th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

At least for me, because Firefox is more compatible with a number of web apps that I use, namely SharePoint.

Reply

Nancy RusliJanuary 12th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

My computer is Mac OS X 10.4.11
I think I messed up with the Firefox by installing …. that cause unable to open the presentation, etc. In fact, I don’t know much about the Firefox. I’m just being stupid in installing something without understanding….. How do I renew a Firefox for starting all over again to get back to the original Firefox? I would appreciate you help. Thanks.

Nancy Rusli

Reply

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