Firefox Experiment Adds Gesture Support for New MacBooks

Got one of the hot new Apple MacBook or MacBook Pro laptops? Mozilla has a special build of Firefox just for you one that makes the browser respond to the multitouch gestures of Apple's latest hardware.

The gesture supporting version is a build of Firefox 3.1 pre-Beta 2 (which means it's got a few changes over the recently released beta 1) and contains some patches contributed by developer Tom Dyas.

The build is experimental (read: potentially unstable), and it remains to be seen whether or not the gestures will make it into the final release, but at least you can catch a glimpse of what the future of web browsing might feel like.

The supported gestures include swiping (moving three fingers over the trackpad), and pinching and twisting (turning two fingers). Here's the corresponding actions:

• Swipe Left: Go back in history
• Swipe Right: Go forward in history (both this and the one above allow you to hold down the Cmd key and open the results in a new tab)
• Swipe Up: head to the top of the page
• Swipe Down: head to the bottom of the page
• Pinch Together: Zoom out
• Pinch Apart: Zoom in
• Twist Right: Next tab
• Twist Left: Previous tab

Unfortunately, I don't have a new MacBook, so I haven't been able to test this version of Firefox. I can confirm that my EeePC hackintosh is not supported (the EeePC trackpad ostensibly supports some multitouch gestures, but it didn't work with Firefox).

If you've got a shiny new Apple laptop, let us know what you think. I should also point out that this build supports not just the new aluminum MacBook and MacBook Pro, but also both models of the MacBook Air, as well as the gesture-aware MacBook Pro that was released earlier this year.

[via Mozilla Links]

See Also:

• First Look: Firefox 3.1 Beta Offers Speed, Better Searching and More
• Firefox 3.1 Alpha Preview Delivers Slick New Features
• Roadmap Targets Firefox 3.1 For the End of 2008