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Sat, Nov 21, 2009 - 04:38 AM EST — AAPL: 199.92 (-0.59, -0.29%) | NASDAQ: 2146.04 (-10.78, -0.5%)

Mozilla reverse-engineered Mac OS X to add multitouch gestures to Firefox for Mac

Monday, December 15, 2008 - 12:07 PM EST

"Owners of a multi-touch trackpad Macbook have been able to use gesture support in Firefox since the introduction of v3.1 beta in October. The recently released Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 added more gestures, like a twist gesture that lets users move through open tabs," Christian Zibreg reports for TG Daily.

"However, Mozilla had to resort to reverse-engineering to enable gestures in Firefox on Macs as Apple has not been especially supportive in providing the necessary APIs to developers. While some claim that the company is still figuring out how to deploy multitouch across OS X, others are concerned that Apple quietly enhanced its own applications with gestures, like iPhoto and Safari, while shutting out potential rivals from taking advantage of the feature as well," Zibreg reports.

"When Apple rolled out its Macbooks with multi-touch trackpads, it did not provide software developers access to the technology through public APIs. This behavior forces some developers to resort to reverse-engineering until Apple opens up multi-touch. One developer we talked to said that Apple's multi-touch APIs are in their infancy and are likely change soon, concluding that at least some developers will wait until Apple locks-down the multi-touch user interface in OS X. It is unclear when that will actually be done," Zibreg reports.

Full article here.

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Dec 15, 08 - 12:28 pm Comment from: BC Kelly

C'mon C'mon now Touch Me Babe

Dec 15, 08 - 12:49 pm Comment from: Harvey

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has a track record for making APIs out of all their UI innovations, so it's probably a matter of the multi-touch API not being ready to come out of the oven.

Dec 15, 08 - 01:21 pm Comment from: Argelius

Wish they'd hurry up and release the final 3.1 version. Would love the multi-touch support but dont want to lose all my valuable extensions/addons...

Dec 15, 08 - 01:25 pm Comment from: All Apps are Equal

Apple is Evil. Microsoft would never be allowed to get away with keeping undocumented APIs for itself.

Dec 15, 08 - 01:35 pm Comment from: Jersey_Trader

Some things may be on hold for the "Just one more thing" in January. I for one and looking to see the Mac Tablet in January. Apple already knows how to do all the features. Just put them together and let us see it!

Dec 15, 08 - 02:25 pm Comment from: @aaRe

That's so funny!

Dec 15, 08 - 02:30 pm Comment from: M.X.N.T.4.1.

I'll give Apple the benefit of the doubt on Multi-Touch, sure they may have added some features that aren't available for other apps, but for all we know down the line they'll change them then there's a load of apps trying to utilised a feature that now works differently or not at all. Apple can't keep Multi-touch hidden from other apps forever it would be pointless for them to do so.

Dec 15, 08 - 02:41 pm Comment from: Masa

J_T: It's not that easy, Apple wants to offer consistent user experience, so all the apps have to act alike, including 3rd party apps.

Apple will release MT APIs when they're ready.

Dec 15, 08 - 02:46 pm Comment from: jeff B.

i think we will see apple open up the multi-touch in snow leopard

Dec 15, 08 - 04:14 pm Comment from: dab2

All I know is that Firefox 3.1 Beta is the cat's meow! Can't wait for it to go final! They have done a great job of reverse-engineering and should now help Apple with the documentation for the final api release!

Dec 15, 08 - 08:30 pm Comment from: bjh

If that's true, the Mozilla programmers are in breach of their user agreement.

Dec 16, 08 - 09:34 am Comment from: All Apps are Equal

"If that's true, the Mozilla programmers are in breach of their user agreement."

Which Apple can shove where the sun don't shine if they're wanting to reserve APIs as "Apple only" so other vendors can't compete on the platform.

They obviously considered Multi-Touch to be production ready for their own applications. They need to make it available to everybody. Otherwise claiming the platform has multi-touch support is just a joke. (ads will need to contain small print: multitouch is for apple applications only)

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Sat, Nov 21, 2009 - 04:38 AM EST — AAPL: 199.92 (-0.59, -0.29%) | NASDAQ: 2146.04 (-10.78, -0.5%)

Mozilla reverse-engineered Mac OS X to add multitouch gestures to Firefox for Mac

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Sat, Nov 21, 2009 - 04:38 AM EST — AAPL: 199.92 (-0.59, -0.29%) | NASDAQ: 2146.04 (-10.78, -0.5%)

Mozilla reverse-engineered Mac OS X to add multitouch gestures to Firefox for Mac

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