
Swiffy: convert SWF files to HTML5 - Robin_Message
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/06/swiffy-convert-swf-files-to-html5.html
======
pornel
> _Which browsers support Swiffy output?_

> Swiffy uses SVG features that are currently _only supported by Webkit-based
> browsers_ such as Safari (on desktop and mobile) and Chrome.

That's not the HTML5 future I wanted :(

In Opera it fails due to JS errors that don't look SVG-specific. It's a shame,
because Opera's SVG support is a bit more complete than WebKit's:
<http://www.codedread.com/svg-support.php> (sadly the Swiffy's site doesn't
say exactly which feature it needs)

Anyway, it's great that they're using SVG. Good use-case for SVG will help it
get more love from browser vendors, and perhaps developers won't have to
reinvent SVG with canvas :)

~~~
jarek
At this point I'm beginning to doubt we'll ever actually get to a fully cross-
browser web. We've had two broad reboot attempts (first to "XHTML+CSS", the
current one to "HTML5") and both times we ended up largely with a limited list
of browsers and engines supported just as we had in the days of Netscape
4.x/IE4. The supported browsers are the cool browsers/engines of the day,
which we then proceed to curse in three-four years. Only the names of the
browsers change.

Edit: heh, didn't even notice who I was replying to.

~~~
noduerme
The cross browser web already exists. It's called AS3. The only reason it gets
a lot of bad press is that no one wants to snuggle up to Adobe. Meanwhile
everybody flails around pretending that HTML5+JS will solve the problem, when
that was already a dinosaur five years ago, and as you said will never be
supported uniformly across browsers.

Edit: Here come the fanbois to downrate me. Consider your own karma.
Downrating me does not change the facts on the ground. You cannot build a 3d
racing game in HTML5+JS in the browser. Can you??? If you can, seriously,
respond instead of hitting that little down arrow, and I would love to see
what combination of technologies you employ!

~~~
tptacek
I think you're getting downvoted for implying that something can be "cross-
browser" that is locked into a single vendor. Your point is clear, but it
exploits a nerdy little loophole in the definition of "cross-brwoser".

~~~
evilduck
Not only that, but Flash isn't perfectly "cross-platform" either. It's really
only a great experience on Windows and 32 bit and a crapshoot everywhere else,
it's still the major cause of browser crashes everywhere else, has struggled
with 64 bit implementations, has a long history of sandbox security problems,
and their feigned "open source" efforts where there's proprietary parts they
don't document or release garners them few OSS friends, downgrades poorly, is
a significant resource requirement overhead, and isn't very accessible by
default (the standard swf you encounter will not be blind-user accessible).

If Flash is the answer, we're in even worse shape than using HTML/JS.

------
pgbovine
first paragraph of TFA:

 _Last summer, an engineering intern named Pieter Senster joined the mobile
advertising team to explore how we could display Flash animations on devices
that don’t support Adobe Flash player. Pieter made such great progress that
Google hired him full time and formed a team to work on the project. Swiffy
was born!_

what an awesomely productive intern! now _that's_ a way to secure yourself a
full-time job!

~~~
sheffield
FTA == From The Article. ;)

~~~
gaustin
You're right about the definition of FTA in this context. But TFA means The
F(ucking|ine|*) Article in this context.

I bet it's not a typo.

~~~
rpearl
I always thought it was "the featured article" if you were being polite.

~~~
sheffield
Yes, that's possible. Sorry, I checked if I'm wrong here:
<http://www.acronymfinder.com/TFA.html> , but didn't find anything relevant.

------
thailandstartup
It's counterintuitive but Adobe should be working on a project like this.

A decent server side SWF->HTML5 would enable existing websites to offer the
first class experience (the SWF) to Flash enabled browsers, and push a HTML5
conversion for non-Flash browsers (Apple mobile devices). It would shaft Apple
(Why does this run so slow on the iPad?) and slow the move away from Flash
(Adobe could still make a credible 'runs everywhere' argument).

~~~
jbwyme
<http://mashable.com/2011/03/08/adobe-wallaby/>

~~~
thailandstartup
Wallaby is a feature of the IDE to publish as HTML5 - it doesn't seek to
address all the SWF content that is already out there.

------
whatever_dude
Reality check: like it says, it converts a _subset_ of Flash 8 content.

It means it converts a subset of content that was made for a version of Flash
that is 6 years old (Flash 8 was released in 2005; Adobe is about to release
Flash Player 11).

Sorry, this is not the "Flash killer" you're looking for.

~~~
chc
Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention, but Flash circa 2011 doesn't
seem all _that_ much better than Flash circa 2005. If it gets them on iPhones,
I think most people would happily take Flash 8 and possibly not even notice
the downgrade.

~~~
whatever_dude
Everything from Flash Player 9 onwards:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Player#Release_hist...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Player#Release_history)

Too much stuff to mention, but the new VM especially. I personally haven't
been working with AS2 (the old VM) in 3 years.

If one wants to create new content (and thus can "afford" to go back some
versions) then this could be useful. Simple banners and whatnot maybe. But in
that case, using many of the new HTML5 native editors is probably a better
bet.

------
_delirium
It'd be interesting if this progressed enough so that browsers could offer
built-in conversion of Flash content to run it without the Flash plugin
enabled.

~~~
loganlinn
Indeed. It's as if Flash is an addictive drug, and we are coming up with ways
to ween ourselves off of it.

~~~
jbwyme
Flash was built to fill a gaping hole in the market. I think that hole is just
about filled (or will be post HTML 5) for the majority of use cases. I see
flash falling into smaller niche-based use cases in the near future.

~~~
dpcan
Before this can happen, there needs to be a brain-dead easy to use IDE for
creating Flash-like presentations in HTML5.

Right now, I see the biggest benefit of Flash being that I can purchase a
number of IDE's and create some multimedia (or games) for the web in no time.

~~~
splatcollision
There's Edit Room, my product, a dead-simple CSS3 animation creation tool.

<http://edit-room.com/>

~~~
noduerme
looks like it could use a little work in firefox 5 before it's at uh, flash
level quality: (screenshot) <http://www.opencombinator.com/editroom.png>

~~~
splatcollision
Yes, firefox support will get there eventually... It just came out and I'm a
solo developer - this is my side project. Thanks for checking it out!

------
efnx
The major downside is that most webshops are and have been using Actionscript
3 for the past 5 years. Has anyone compiled any AS3 with this?

~~~
efnx
Here is the output after trying to convert one of my projects:

9-slice scaling is not supported. (11 occurrences)

Pixel hinting on strokes is not supported. (10 occurrences)

Filters are not supported. (100 occurrences)

Shape tweens are not supported. (2 occurrences)

ActionScript 3.0 is not supported. (2 occurrences)

Advanced text rendering using continuous stroke modulation is not supported.
(3 occurrences)

~~~
hammock
Some more errors here, just so we can start compiling a list of what is
unsupported:

An unsupported SWF tag was encountered. (1 occurrences)

The global ActionScript property _quality is not supported. (1 occurrences)

Character glyphs aligned on pixel boundaries are not supported. (4
occurrences)

The #initclip pragma is not supported. (23 occurrences)

An unsupported audio codec was encountered. (1 occurrences)

~~~
joshuarrrr
A couple more:

Miter limit will behave differently, as it will revert to bevel instead of
cutting off the joint. (65 occurrences)

Adjusting the font kerning within dynamic text is not supported. (7
occurrences)

------
fedorabbit
My experience of HTML5 right now doesn't really have significant performance
improvement compare to Flash, even on Mac OS X. I think it still has a long
way to go. But it is nice to see someone's exploring the frontier! The
blurring effect doesn't seem right though...

~~~
cryptoz
My experience of HTML5 is that it blows Flash out of the water. Flash on Linux
is (still) an absolute disaster while HTML5 is making progress every day and
has long surpassed Flash in usefulness for most tasks.

~~~
whatever_dude
My experience is that your anecdotal experience is flawed and that Flash has a
better workflow AND performance AND battery conservation on both desktops and
mobile platforms (where it's allowed).

[http://www.next-gen.biz/news/html5-still-lagging-behind-
flas...](http://www.next-gen.biz/news/html5-still-lagging-behind-flash)

<http://iq12.com/blog/as3-benchmark/>

[http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-
player-101-for-...](http://workflowed.blogspot.com/2011/02/flash-
player-101-for-android.html)

[http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-
Ar...](http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-
Articles/Flash-Player-on-Android-High-Performance-Low-Battery-
Drain-73833.aspx)

[http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/testing-videos-
on-...](http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/testing-videos-on-
cellphones-with-flash/)

[http://www.androidtabletnows.com/android-devices-
news/2011/n...](http://www.androidtabletnows.com/android-devices-
news/2011/nexus-one-has-better-html5-performance-than-iphone-4-but-flash-is-
still-king.html)

<http://themaninblue.com/writing/perspective/2010/03/22/>

<http://vimeo.com/10553088>

[http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/09/17/flash-outperforms-
htm...](http://www.blackcj.com/blog/2010/09/17/flash-outperforms-html5-on-
mobile-devices/)

<http://www.craftymind.com/guimark3/>

<http://www.craftymind.com/guimark2/>

But hey, let's complain about it because "Adobe is evil" or whatever! (and
note: I'm an Ubuntu x64 user).

~~~
pcwalton
<http://iq12.com/blog/as3-benchmark/>

Is this what you wanted to post? This shows that the browsers' JS engines have
been outrunning ActionScript for years now...

~~~
whatever_dude
This is exactly what I wanted to post. My links cover all the spectrum of
tests employed, not just tests that are favorable to Flash. GuiMark3, for
example, found that HTML5 rendering of video in high resolutions on mobile
devices tend to be faster than Flash video too, depending on version. I'm a
defender of pragmatism, not of Flash, and it drives me mad to see people
saying things that are just not true, like the previous poster.

My point is that if one analyzes the _data_ , one will find that Flash tend to
win over HTML5/canvas performance more often than not. The canvas and visual
performance tests are very telling.

As a side note, there's definitely a gap in code execution - that's the link
you posted - but it's just one of the factors, as Adobe is well aware of that
and is addressing it on the next release. The AS3 VM was much faster than JS
when introduced, then they spent a lot of time not doing any optimization at
all. From what I've seen from their presentations, they're ready to take that
back. Time will tell.

------
watty
I tried a handful of random SWF files from my dropbox and none of them worked.
Several were due to AS 3.0, which isn't supported but even simplest animation
said "The #initclip pragma is not supported.".

~~~
whatever_dude
#initclip is an internal syntax used normally when using AS2 classes (it was
auto-generated, although you could use it manually too), as it forced code to
run before the normal execution cycle.

------
afhof
Seems to be limited to 512kB. Thats not much of a demo.

------
tolmasky
How does this compare to Gordon? <https://github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/wiki>

~~~
EvilRyry
Both are ways to play flash content without flash but the approaches are quite
different.

Gordon is a Flash runtime written in Javascript, allowing the browser to play
SWFs.

Swiffy is a tool separate from the browser that converts SWFs into a form
usable by browsers (SVG and JS).

------
kachnuv_ocasek
Great example of misuse of the HTML5 buzzword.

------
libria
Cool. Now if we only had a Silverlight -> HTML5+js converter we could quell
the Windows 8 uproar.

------
johnhenry
I can't help but wonder if content owners might view this as a threat to the
security of their flash creations. Afterall, this is essentially a decompiler,
isn't it?

~~~
georgemcbay
Plain Flash SWFs are trivial to decompile and decompilers have been available
basically since the beginning of the platform. Anyone who really worries about
that sort of thing is running their Flash output through obfuscators/minifiers
similar to the ones available for JavaScript. With such obfuscated swfs you
can still extract the code but it'll be basically an unmaintainable mess. I'm
sure the output of such obfuscated code with this tool is just as bad as it
would be if decompiling the bytecode to ActionScript, if not worse.

------
noduerme
Sweet! So all the obnoxious animation and banner ads can be converted into
"HTML5" that runs 3x slower and sucks up 80% of a dual core processor per
ad...and NONE of the actual coding, deep interactivity or UI enhancements
implied in the ECMA4/AS3 platform are included. Is this the shape of things to
come? Let me off this stupid ride, google. I vote DuckDuckGo, pageranks based
on qualified user responses regardless of crawlable content, interactivity
with client-side languages and structures that can't necessarily be crawled by
a bot script, and an end to a monolithic, archaic system of ranking up
corporate garbage.

BLOW ME, Google. Apple. HTML5 lovers. If anyone needs proof Flex/Flash won't
be dead for a long time, here it is =)

~~~
lparry
You're obviously a windows user (and a flash "developer"), because for people
on every other platform it's flash that chews up 80%CPU time and runs dog
slow. Maybe if adobe hadnt give every other platform such shitty
implementations, there mightn't be so many people working towards killing it.

