Multitouch interfaces are all the rage, for good reason, and a Mozilla programmer has been working to enable the technology for Web applications in the Firefox browser.
In this screenshot from Gomes’ video, the programmer shrinks and enlarges icons using a multitouch interface for an application running within Firefox.
Multitouch on Firefox from Felipe on Vimeo.
Firefox today can be controlled with multitouch gestures–a three-finger sweep up and down to go to the top or bottom of a Web page, for example, or two-finger pinch gestures to zoom out. But Felipe Gomes, a Brazilian computer science student who just finished a stint as a Mozilla intern, has demonstrated how Web-based applications, not just Firefox, can use multitouch.
His demonstration shows multitouch controls to shrink and enlarge icons, paint, select a region of a photo, and play Pong.
Multitouch interfaces, for example on the iPhone and Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart PCs, let the computer interpret the contact and motion of multiple fingers on the screen. And Apple MacBooks are equipped with multitouch trackpads.
One issue for multitouch, though, is standardizing the meaning of various gestures. Firefox and Safari on a Mac both move forward and backward in browsing history with three-finger sweeps right and left, respectively, but Safari doesn’t follow Mozilla’s example of three
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