The latest beta version of Mozilla's Firefox browser brings built-in support for the multitouch trackpads on modern Mac notebooks. Back in October, Mozilla's Eddie Lee produced an experimental version of Firefox that allowed Mac users to control the browser with multifingered gestures (no, not that kind). In v3.2 Beta 2, those gestures have been made official.

I gave it a try, and the gestures are even better than those in Apple's own browser, Safari. Here's the list of what you can do, provided by MacRumors. "Swipe" means a three fingered sweep:

Swipe Left: Go back in history (hold Command to open it in a tab)

Swipe Right: Go forward 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

On my old (multibody?) MacBook Pro, the gestures are all supported. The "pinch-to-zoom" differs from Safari's in that it will keep zooming as you move your fingers — in Safari, each pinch motion only gives one level of zoom meaning you need to repeat the gesture to zoom more than one level.

The twist-to-switch-tabs gesture works a lot better than you'd think, including wrap-around so that once you get to the last tab, another clockwise tweak brings you to the first tab.

All in all, this is a very useful enhancement. It means that you can control almost every aspect of browsing with just one hand. Combined with the new "Private Browsing" mode, this makes Firefox the go-to browser for XXX browsing.

Product page [Mozilla via MacRumors]

Original photo: Armangi/Flickr

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