Digia has released a public beta of the world’s first fully finger touch controlled web browser for Sony Ericsson UIQ3 based smartphones. Digia @Web 1.0 browser engine is based on the open-source S60 webkit engine version which is used as the base by other browsers such as Apple Safari, iPhone, Google Android and Nokia S60 Web Services.

Key features of Digia @Web include:

- Zoom: @Web provides four zooming levels to select. You can change between levels by swiping your finger or stylus from the corner to the center point of the screen. Indicative markings appear on screen when you start zooming. You can zoom in by swiping from left bottom corner towards right top; zoom out by swiping opposite direction. The zoom level can also be switched bigger or smaller tapping twice anywhere on the screen.

- Address Bar: When you start writing a URL, recently visited addresses from the history are displayed. After you have finished writing the address or selected one from the history, tapping outside the address bar starts loading the webpage.

- Settings: The browser settings can be opened by holding a finger or stylus in one place on the screen for a couple of seconds. From here you can clear history, cache, cookies and disable JavaScript

Other features include:

- Full finger touch User Interface
- Page control with finger
- Intelligent Bookmark functionality
- URL auto-complete (from history)
- Automatic full screen browsing via auto-hiding Address bar and Navigation bar
- Page rotation for portrait and landscape browsing

During the beta phase Digia intends to add new functionality such as favicons in bookmarks view, multiple window (tabs) support, new languages, non-Latin rendering and other types of content such as audio, RSS feeds, Flash and Silverlight.

Click here to sign up for the Digia @Web Beta.