For many of us, our first experiences of the web were defined by Adobe Flash. I recall spending hours hopping between the numerous Flash game repositories, trying my hand at anything from strategy games to stick figure Mortal Kombat clones (not to mention those silly games our math teachers would have us play in grade school to teach us our multiplication tables).
However, the capabilities of HTML5 are occluding the web of yesterday, seizing ground from Flash in the crucial mobile market. Flash is slowly being rendered obsolete as its flexibility is matched by new web standards. This is both saddening, as Flash gems of the '90s and '00s are inevitably lost, and also wonderful, given how notorious Flash is for security vulnerabilities.
Thankfully, numerous tools exist to convert Flash applications into HTML5, including Google Swiffy. Named for the Flash file extension (.swf), Swiffy uses SVG components to render converted Flash objects and uses JavaScript and CSS to animate them in a way scarcely distinguishable from the original.
Swiffy was created by Google engineering intern Pieter Senster, who was searching for a way to render advertisements on mobile devices which did not support Flash. Unfortunately, the complete source code of the tool is not publically availible, but it is functional and quite impressive work!
A Flash game converted to HTML5 via Swiffy.
For teachers whose curricula rely on Flash to present applications, games, videos, and more, converters such as Swiffy allow for that content to be accessed on mobile devices which do not support it, including many Apple products. This eliminates technical complications that could arise from incompatibility, ensuring peace of mind in the knowledge that there will be no time lost over configuration errors or the unavailibility of the necessary software packages.
From a development standpoint, the move away from Flash is wonderful as it decreases the barrier of entry to web application development. Adobe development tools are both proprietary and expensive, and by extension, so are Flash applications. Open web standards as the norm for interactive web content prevent any sort of monopoly on such content. I won't plug FOSS here, but suffice it to say that there are ethical as well as technical reasons for the web development community to distance itself from Flash.
As Flash continues to decline, the rise of HTML5 will only be enriched by the conversion of outdated Flash content to the new standards. Again, there is something to be said for the loss of those old Flash artifacts in their original format, but the absence of "Update Flash plugin" messages is something I greatly anticipate.
However, the capabilities of HTML5 are occluding the web of yesterday, seizing ground from Flash in the crucial mobile market. Flash is slowly being rendered obsolete as its flexibility is matched by new web standards. This is both saddening, as Flash gems of the '90s and '00s are inevitably lost, and also wonderful, given how notorious Flash is for security vulnerabilities.
Thankfully, numerous tools exist to convert Flash applications into HTML5, including Google Swiffy. Named for the Flash file extension (.swf), Swiffy uses SVG components to render converted Flash objects and uses JavaScript and CSS to animate them in a way scarcely distinguishable from the original.
Swiffy was created by Google engineering intern Pieter Senster, who was searching for a way to render advertisements on mobile devices which did not support Flash. Unfortunately, the complete source code of the tool is not publically availible, but it is functional and quite impressive work!
A Flash game converted to HTML5 via Swiffy.
For teachers whose curricula rely on Flash to present applications, games, videos, and more, converters such as Swiffy allow for that content to be accessed on mobile devices which do not support it, including many Apple products. This eliminates technical complications that could arise from incompatibility, ensuring peace of mind in the knowledge that there will be no time lost over configuration errors or the unavailibility of the necessary software packages.
From a development standpoint, the move away from Flash is wonderful as it decreases the barrier of entry to web application development. Adobe development tools are both proprietary and expensive, and by extension, so are Flash applications. Open web standards as the norm for interactive web content prevent any sort of monopoly on such content. I won't plug FOSS here, but suffice it to say that there are ethical as well as technical reasons for the web development community to distance itself from Flash.
As Flash continues to decline, the rise of HTML5 will only be enriched by the conversion of outdated Flash content to the new standards. Again, there is something to be said for the loss of those old Flash artifacts in their original format, but the absence of "Update Flash plugin" messages is something I greatly anticipate.
Comments
Post a Comment