Mozilla Firefox 4 beta 3 released, adds multi-touch enhancements in Windows 7

Mozilla has made the third beta of Firefox 4 available for download and testing this week, and the popular browser has received two major updates: one is very visible, one is not.

The less outwardly visible improvement in Firefox 4 beta 3 is the improved JavaScript engine, which now supports 64-bit "Fat Values." This promises more efficient code execution for complex graphical and animated content, among other things.

The more visible addition is new support for touch events in Windows 7. While the touch events are packaged as three relatively simple actions (touching the screen, moving the finger, removing the finger) they can be stacked to track multiple fingers touching simultaneously and therefore create new gestures. On Mozilla Hacks, Paul Roget shows some of what is possible with HTML5 and the new touch events in this beta, The experimental results are quite exciting.

For the complete list of changes and upcoming features, visit Mozilla's Firefox 4 beta site.