All posts tagged ‘flash’

File Under: Browsers
Feb
8
2012

Adobe Confirms: No Flash for Chrome on Android

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Google issued a beta release of Chrome for Android earlier today. The browser provides support for modern web standards and includes a number of compelling features that aren’t available in the Android’s default browser. One noteworthy Chrome desktop feature that isn’t included in the mobile port, however, is the integrated Flash runtime.

Adobe has issued a statement confirming that Chrome for Android does not support Flash content. The company also indicated that it does not plan to work with Google to add Flash support to the new mobile browser. Adobe will, however, continue supporting Flash in the current default Android browser.

“Today Google introduced Chrome for Android Beta. As we announced last November, Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content,” wrote Adobe’s Flash Platform product manager Bill Howard.

Adobe struggled for years to make the Flash player plugin viable on mobile devices. Though it was able to make Flash work reasonably well on Android phones, results were mixed on other systems. Due to Apple’s unwillingness to allow the Flash plugin on iOS and the difficulty that Adobe faced bringing the Flash player to new devices, the plugin never achieved the same ubiquity on phones that it has historically enjoyed on the desktop.

These setbacks caused Adobe to abandon its mobile Flash player strategy last year. The company announced that it would phase out development of its mobile Flash player plugin and not support it on new platforms. Adobe instead focused its mobile Flash efforts on developing tools for deploying Flash content as native mobile applications. It also strengthened its commitment to native web standards and acknowledged HTML5 as the way forward for building rich mobile web experiences.

When Google eventually moves to replace the default Android browser with Chrome in future versions of the Android platform, devices that run the operating system will likely no longer be able to play Flash content in the browser.

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news.

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File Under: Browsers
Feb
7
2012

Adobe Builds Flash Sandbox for Firefox

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Flash logoAdobe wants to save Firefox users from falling victim to Flash-based security flaws. Working with Mozilla, Adobe has created a beta version of Flash with a new sandbox technology designed to limit the damage Flash-based attacks can do. Adobe previously added similar sandbox protection to Google’s Chrome browser.

If you’d like to test the new Flash Player Protected Mode for Firefox on Windows 7 or Vista, head over to the Adobe Labs download page. Bear in mind that this is a beta release and may contain some bugs.

The new sandbox feature for Flash in Firefox will provide extra protection against malicious browser exploits launched through the Flash Player. Sandboxing means that even when such attacks succeed, the damage is limited and won’t spill over into the rest of the browser or even the operating system.

The design of the Flash sandbox is similar to what Adobe uses in its Adobe Reader X Protected Mode. “Since its launch in November 2010, we have not seen a single successful exploit in the wild against Adobe Reader X,” writes Peleus Uhley, senior security researcher for Adobe. Uhley goes on to say that Adobe is hoping to “see similar results with the Flash Player sandbox for Firefox once the final version is released later this year.”

While Adobe has ceased development of mobile Flash, the company continues to develop and improve Flash for the desktop. HTML5′s canvas and video elements — among others — are designed to remove the need for plugins like Flash on the web. However, HTML5 support remains incomplete even in the newest browsers, and Flash will likely remain a necessary part of the web video and animation world for the foreseeable future.

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File Under: Programming, Software & Tools
Nov
16
2011

Adobe Puts Flex Out to Open Source Pasture

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If you needed further proof that even Adobe is done with Flash, look no further than the company’s recent announcement that it will open source the Flash-based Flex SDK. Adobe plans to turn over its Flex SDK to the Apache Software Foundation.

Flex is the company’s development framework for building cross-platform applications using Adobe Flash and ActionScript. The SDK’s focus on data-driven apps made Flex a popular choice with Adobe’s enterprise customers, many of whom are no doubt feeling a bit let down to see Adobe walking away from Flex.

Much of the Flex codebase is already open source; what’s changing with the move to the Apache Software Foundation is the governance of Flex. Adobe is no longer the sole guiding force behind Flex.

Ordinarily, when a company opens up a project like Flex it’s good news for developers, but in this case it feels more like Adobe’s exit strategy. The community of Flex developers may have gained some more control over Flex’s future, but that future looks pretty bleak.

Adobe has already made it clear that the company plans to refocus its efforts on HTML5, and, while it says it intends to continue supporting Flex, it also says, “in the long-term, we believe HTML5 will be the best technology for enterprise application development.”

In fact the initial message about the future of Flex was dire enough that Adobe felt the need to update its FAQ to specifically address concerns that it is abandoning Flex. “Absolutely not,” says Adobe in the updated statement, adding that the company is “incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved with Flex.”

While the updated statement is intended to reassure Flex developers, it’s hard to miss the use of the past participle in reference to Flex, which doesn’t bode well for developers looking to the future. It’s also hard to miss the reiterated commitment to HTML5. “In time,” says Adobe, “we believe HTML5 could support the majority of use cases where Flex is used today.” The company puts the timeframe for most applications in the three- to five-year range. In other words, Adobe believes Flex is only a good bet for the immediate future, developers interested in building something with more long term viability would do well to consider the web and HTML5.

For more details on the future of Flex and Flash, be sure to read through Adobe’s updated FAQ on the subject.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
Nov
9
2011

What the Death of Mobile Flash Means for the Web

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Adobe Software has let slip that it plans to abandon its Flash Player for mobile web browsers. Instead, the company will refocus its mobile efforts on web standards like HTML5, along with tools like Adobe AIR, which allows developers to convert Flash content into native mobile applications.

The move comes as something of a surprise given how vigorously Adobe has defended mobile Flash in the past. Lately, however, Adobe has been proposing new web standards and even bought the non-Flash mobile development tool PhoneGap, both of which indicate that Adobe is looking toward a future without Flash.

Indeed, while Adobe’s plans affect only mobile Flash at the moment, the sudden about-face does not bode well for Flash on the desktop. Mobile devices are the fastest growing means of connecting to the web; what doesn’t work on mobile devices will soon not be a relevant part of the web at all.

In abandoning mobile, Adobe is effectively admitting that Flash has no future on the web.

That doesn’t mean Flash will disappear overnight. Nor does it mean that Flash will ever disappear for developers interested in using it. It just means that when it comes to deploying Flash applications, the web won’t be a realistic option. Instead, Flash developers of the future will convert their Flash code into Android, Windows Mobile or iOS apps using Adobe AIR’s conversion tools.

Web developers, on the other hand, will likely abandon Flash if they haven’t already. Without a reliable way to serve Flash content to mobile devices, its web presence will likely continue to decline. Of course the demise of Flash has been inevitable for some time — after all, much of HTML5 was specifically designed to give developers a means of replacing Flash dependencies with native tools — but Adobe’s decision to abandon mobile devices should send a clear message to any developers who haven’t yet read the writing on the wall: Mobile is the future of the web and Flash isn’t part of it.

In the short term, Adobe is merely admitting what most developers already know; there are only two ways to develop for mobile devices: using the web and HTML5 or building platform native apps.

To choose web-based Flash apps over either of these options would mean consciously limiting your app’s audience. Given that neither Apple’s iOS nor Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 supports Flash (nor for that matter will Microsoft’s Windows 8 Metro), developing web apps that relied on Mobile Flash meant targeting only Android and Blackberry users. Adobe’s decision to abandon Flash for Mobile browsers is simply a pragmatic acceptance of the existing development landscape.

Similarly, while we don’t expect it to happen overnight, eventually Adobe will probably abandon Flash Player for the desktop as well — why continue developing a product when very few are using it? The AIR platform and its Flash-based tools for building native mobile apps will still be around to sell the Flash development tools (which is, after all, how Adobe makes money). Adobe simply won’t have any great need to continue pushing Flash on the web.

While some web standards advocates might see the eventual demise of Flash Player as a good thing for the web, we’re not so sure. Web standards were created to ensure that sites and apps work no matter what browser or device you’re using. Web standards were not created for — and have not historically been very good at — driving innovation on the web.

Innovation on the web has more often come from individual vendors — browsers, device makers and, yes, Flash. Flash laid many of the so-called cowpaths that HTML5 is paving in open standards. The audio and video tags for embedding media, the canvas element for animation, and the websockets protocol for communications are just a few of the things Flash helped to popularize on the web. That’s not to suggest that a web without Flash will want for innovation, but it certainly won’t be richer for Flash’s absence when that day arrives.

Photo: Laurence Olivier as Hamlet

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia
Sep
21
2011

Adobe Hopes Impressive 3-D Graphics Can Save Flash 11

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Adobe has announced Flash Player 11, a significant update for the company’s beleaguered browser plugin. Flash Player 11 will give Flash developers access to an impressive set of hardware-accelerated 3-D graphics tools.

Alongside Flash 11 Adobe has also announced version 3 of the Flash-based runtime, Adobe Air.

Flash Player 11 and Air 3 are scheduled for release in early October. Adobe hasn’t set an exact date, but the company’s annual Max conference, which runs October 1-5, seems a safe bet.

Adobe’s Flash browser plugin has taken a beating in the last few years, losing many of its traditional web roles like video or animations to the new features in HTML5. Additionally, the mobile world has not been kind to Flash. You won’t find the plugin on any Apple products, nor will it be part of the upcoming Windows 8 Metro platform.

While there are no doubt many Webmonkey readers who would like to see Flash disappear forever, Adobe continues to push Flash in directions which, so far, HTML5 can’t compete.

For this release that means the world of online 3-D graphics rendering. Flash 11 isn’t trying to compete with HTML5 or even reclaim its former strongholds like video (though for streaming DRM video it remains the only real choice). Instead Adobe is going after the burgeoning online gaming market with an impressive new 3-D rendering API.

The new Stage 3D rendering in Flash 11, nicknamed Molehill, is a very low level API for fully hardware accelerated 2-D and 3-D graphics. Adobe claims that Molehill can “efficiently animate millions of objects on screen, smoothly rendered at 60 frames per second.” The end result, according to Adobe, is “console-quality games” in the browser.

Indeed the videos Adobe has released showing off the new Molehill-based graphics are impressive.

Of course one day WebGL may well mean that Flash 11′s 3-D performance is possible without the Flash plugin. Unfortunately Internet Explorer still lacks WebGL support and WebGL’s performance varies considerably from browser to browser. For now Flash 11 looks to have the edge in 3-D graphics, whether or not that will last remains to be seen.

3-D Graphics aren’t the only thing new in this release, Flash 11 is now a 64-bit application on Windows, OS X and Linux. Adobe has also announced the release of Air 3.0 with improved tools for installing Air and converting Air apps to native iOS and Android applications.

If you hate Flash the latest release probably isn’t going to change your mind. Nor is it likely to convince Apple or Microsoft that Flash should be apart of their OSes. But if you’re a game developer who’d like to build console-quality games on the web, Flash 11 is your friend.

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File Under: Browsers, HTML5, Multimedia
Sep
16
2011

Metro-style Internet Explorer 10 Ditches Flash, Plugins

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Windows 8 will have two versions of Internet Explorer 10: a conventional browser that lives on the legacy desktop, and a new Metro-style, touch-friendly browser that lives in the Metro world. The second of these, the Metro browser, will not support any plugins. Whether Flash, Silverlight, or some custom business app, sites that need plugins will only be accessible in the non-touch, desktop-based browser.

Should one ever come across a page that needs a plugin, the Metro browser has a button to go to that page within the desktop browser. This yanks you out of the Metro experience and places you on the traditional desktop.

The rationale is a familiar one: plugin-based content shortens battery life, and comes with security, reliability, and privacy problems. Sites that currently depend on the capabilities provided by Flash or Silverlight should switch to HTML5.

Microsoft has been vigorously promoting HTML5 for the last year and a half as the best way of providing rich interactivity on the Web. HTML5 potentially has reach far beyond that of Flash, since it can target both conventional browsers and closed ecosystems (such as iOS) alike. However, until now, Microsoft’s messaging has been tempered somewhat: use HTML5 when you can, but if you can’t—if you need support for DRM-protected media streaming, for example—then it’s reasonable to switch to an alternative, plugin-based technology.

With Windows 8, however, those reasonable decisions to use Flash or Silverlight will now be heavily penalized. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with the desktop browser, of course; the rendering engine and performance will be identical between both Metro and desktop. But the experience will be substantially inferior. The desktop browser isn’t designed for touch inputs, meaning that users will either have to switch to a mouse and keyboard, or fumble around with an interface that wasn’t built for fingers. The switch to the desktop browser also appears to discard things like back button history and current page state.

This puts the Metro browser in a peculiar position. Microsoft has positioned tablets as merely a different kind of PC. That, the company argues, affords capabilities and features not possible on iPad-style devices. But PCs have browser plugins—more generally, they have the ability to use the right technology for the job. If Metro doesn’t include that flexibility, that could be seen as diminishing the “PCness” of the platform.

HTML5 still isn’t a total replacement for plugin technologies, either. The gap is certainly narrowing: Web Sockets, Web Workers, built-in support for webcams and microphones, and more, are all coming to HTML5 browsers (or are available already), and these features will obviate the need for plugins for many applications. But certain corners are likely to remain; DRM-protected video, for example, might forever be impossible in HTML5, and while many people find DRM distasteful, many broadcasters feel they have little choice but to use it.

The solution to this conundrum on the iOS platform has been the app: companies like Netflix and the BBC have applications to watch video on these devices. The result is that in the desire to push an open, plugin-free Web, companies are being forced to migrate away from the Web entirely. Silverlight developers, at least, will have an easy migration path available to them: the new Metro development environment, used for producing native Metro applications, borrows heavily from Silverlight, and making the switch from an in-browser plugin-based application to a standalone Metro application should be relatively easier. Flash developers will have to wait to see what tools Adobe delivers.

HTML5 design and developer tools also remain weak, though this situation is improving with the creation of products like Adobe Edge.

With Microsoft’s promotion of HTML5, and the precedent set by iOS, the decision to get rid of plugins in the Metro browser is perhaps unsurprising. But it’s not clear that this will truly help Windows 8; the awkward user experience penalizes users who, for no fault of their own, need to use plugins, and detracts from Windows 8′s PC claims. A switch to a more HTML5-powered Web will happen regardless—does Microsoft really need to force the issue like this?

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news.

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File Under: Software
May
3
2011

Review: Dreamweaver and Flash Updates Deliver Mobile Dev Tools

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Adobe has released updates for several of its Creative Suite applications, including Dreamweaver and Flash. The new Creative Suite 5.5 adds some new tools designed to target tablets and mobile devices, as well as improved HTML5 and CSS3 support in Dreamweaver 5.5, Adobe’s flagship web development app.

Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium is $1,800. For those already using CS 5 Web Premium, upgrades are $400. Adobe has kicked off a new subscription-based pricing model, with Web Premium going for $130 per month, or $90 per month if you commit to a one year contract.

What’s New

Dreamweaver 5.5 adds several new HTML5 and CSS3 tools to the mix, including a newer version of the WebKit rendering engine, which Dreamweaver uses for live previews. Dreamweaver’s WebKit renderer is now up to par with what you’ll find in the latest release of Chrome, Safari and most mobile web browsers. That means the Dreamweaver Live Preview and Multiscreen Preview features will mirror what you’ll see later in the browser.

Dreamweaver added the Multiscreen Preview panel in an earlier update, but the latest release is considerably more polished. The Multiscreen Preview panel shows your site design in desktop, phone, and tablet screen sizes, and makes it easy to tweak your CSS so that your site looks nice on any screen.

Combining the Multiscreen Preview with Dreamweaver’s new @media support means the app is considerably more adept at responsive design — that is, making sure that your site looks good regardless of what device it happens to be viewed on.

Multiscreen Preview in Dreamweaver 5.5 (click for larger image)

This release improves Dreamweaver’s ability to work with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. The Dynamically Related Files feature provides direct access to any page’s related files, for example, any php files used to render the current URL. While it’s a nice feature, it won’t help those of you working with lower level frameworks like Rails or Django.

The updated Dreamweaver 5.5 even turns to some outside tools to offer even more options for those targeting the small-screen world of mobile devices: Both jQuery Mobile and PhoneGap have been integrated into this release. JQuery Mobile makes it easy to add touch-based events and other mobile tricks to your site, while PhoneGap can convert your HTML, CSS and JavaScript into native mobile apps for Android and iOS. Keep in mind that both of these outside frameworks are pre-1.0 releases, and jQuery Mobile in particular is still an alpha release, so use with caution.

Among the smaller, but nice to see, additions to Dreamweaver 5.5 are support for HTML5 tags in the code hinting. You’ll also find new options to use the HTML5 doctype and more code hinting for CSS3 selectors and attributes.

Flash CS 5.5 also hops on the multi-screen bandwagon with new features to scale objects in the timeline, shared asset libraries and new publishing options for a variety of platforms — Android and iOS as well as traditional Flash movies.

The new content resizing options are especially nice and work a bit more like what you’ll find in other Adobe apps, such as Photoshop. Simply select the content you’d like to resize and either drag, or enter specific dimensions in the dialog box.

Improved resizing tools in Flash 5.5 (click for larger image)

The emphasis on mobile carries over to the new code snippet options as well. Snippets are little chunks of Actionscript designed to handle common events without forcing you to write everything out by hand. Previous versions of Flash include options like button events or data handlers. Flash CS 5.5 adds about 20 new snippets that target mobile devices — gestures, finger events, swiping and so on. Applying snippets is also easier thanks to a new floating panel display that previews code snippets and then allows you to drag and drop the code onto an object on your stage.

Verdict

There are some great new features in both Dreamweaver and Flash, but whether or not either is worth the upgrade depends on what you do with the apps. For designers this is a less compelling upgrade. There are few new tools, but the emphasis in both apps’ new features is clearly on developers working with code, particularly those coding for mobile devices.

At $400 just for the upgrade from CS 5, CS 5.5 is a lot of money for what you get. It’s a much better deal if you’re still using CS 4 or older versions, but it almost seems as if Adobe is using this upgrade mainly to push its new subscription-based sales model.

Scott Fegette, Senior Product Manager at Adobe, says that the company is moving to “a 24 month major release cycle, with interim updates.” Since this is one of those interim updates and will still set you back $400, the subscription model begins to look more appealing. Especially given that with subscriptions updates are automatic — new features are added as the are developed — there’s no waiting for a big release date.

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File Under: Multimedia
Dec
1
2010

New Flash Player 10.2 Goes Easy on the CPU

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flash logo[Updated, see below] Adobe has released the first beta of Flash Player 10.2, an update that focuses primarily on speed and performance improvements. New in Flash 10.2 is something Adobe calls “Stage Video hardware acceleration,” which the company claims will “decrease processor usage and enable higher frame rates, reduced memory usage, and greater pixel fidelity and quality.” And the hardware acceleration technology does do all of these things, though your mileage will vary depending on what kind of hardware and software you’re using.

To try out the new Flash Player 10.2 beta, head over the Adobe download page. Be aware that, while 10.2 appears to be relatively stable, it is a beta release and there may be bugs.

The Stage Video hardware acceleration means that Flash Player 10.2 can leverage your graphics card for not just H.264 hardware decoding (which works in Flash Player 10.1) but also color conversion, scaling, and blitting.

Adobe’s press release makes a rather bold claim: “using Stage Video, we’ve seen laptops play smooth 1080p HD video with just over 0% CPU usage.”

Sadly, we have not seen such results. While we won’t argue with the smoothness of the playback in this new release, Flash is still going to use quite a bit of your PC’s CPU. Based on my testing (done on a Macbook Pro laptop using both Firefox 4b7 and Safari 5, and a Mac Pro tower using the same browsers — Wired is an all-Mac office), while CPU usage is down in Flash 10.2, it’s still a long way from zero.

Update: Since this article was published, we’ve been hearing from you, our awesome readers, in the comments and over e-mail. Some things to note: The new beta performs much better on Windows computers than it does under Mac OS X. Also, full hardware acceleration on Mac OS X requires Snow Leopard or later, otherwise it falls back to using software rendering in the CPU. Thanks for the comments, and keep them coming!

On our Macs, we tested several 1080p videos on YouTube in Flash Player 10.1 and found that on average the 10.1 plugin used between 44-48 percent CPU. Watching the same movie in Flash 10.2 did drop the CPU usage down to the 18-22 percent range, but definitely not zero.

Worse, running the same tests on Adobe’s Stage Video optimized demos, Flash 10.2 actually performed worse than than it did on normal 1080p movies with the cpu usage varying widely between 5 and 60 percent (the 18-20 percent range appears to be the norm).

The short story is that, while Flash 10.2 does offer decreased processor usage, it doesn’t quite live up to Adobe’s claims. While Flash Player 10.2′s performance falls short of the hype, there’s no question that it’s a huge leap forward in terms of performance. The smaller CPU footprint alone is well worth the upgrade, provided you don’t mind running beta software. So far Adobe has not set a final release data for Flash 10.2.

One other thing to keep in mind: to take advantage of the new Stage Video tools, sites like YouTube and Vimeo will need to alter their video players. So, it may be some time before the full benefit of Stage Video’s improvements makes it to your day-to-day web browsing.

As for other new features in this release, there’s Internet Explorer 9 GPU support and support for fullscreen mode with dual monitors — meaning that you can have a movie on one screen and keep working on another.

Custom cursors get some love in this release, too, with Flash Player 10.2 handing off the job to the operating system rather than using resources to manually draw custom cursors. The beta also improves text rendering, adding sub-pixel rendering enhancements that should make your typography look a bit nicer and more readable.

It’s worth noting that the Flash Player 10.2 beta does not replace the Flash Player “Square” preview release — in other words, Flash Player 10.2 still isn’t 64-bit native. If 64-bit support is important to you, stick with the Flash Player “Square” preview.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
Nov
5
2010

Going Straight: How To Ditch Flash and Embrace the Future of the Web

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Adobe’s Flash Player is the whipping boy of the web — it’s proprietary, HTML5 is better, Flash hurts battery life and it’ll slap your grandmother if you leave it running for too long.

Apple has been leading the anti-Flash charge, most recently electing to not ship Flash with its new MacBook Air notebooks. Apple claims it doesn’t want to be responsible for keeping Flash up to date, but the company is also prescient when it comes to recognizing when old technology needs to go (remember the floppy disc?).

While we’ve been using Flash blocking browser extensions for years, the idea of ditching Flash completely still feels premature. HTML5, for all its promise, still can’t match Flash in every area, nor is every website embracing HTML5 right now.

However, the promise of better battery life for laptops and mobile devices make the argument against Flash even more compelling. Our friends at Ars Technica were testing the new Macbook Air notebooks when they discovered that getting rid of the Flash Player boosted battery life by as much as 33 percent.

While we can’t guarantee you’ll see the same results on your own laptop, if you want to ditch Flash completely it isn’t too difficult to do.

Blogger Steven Frank has details on how to get rid of Flash on the Mac and replace it with the YouTube5 Safari extension. YouTube5 rewrites every YouTube embed you encounter, forcing them to use the HTML5 version of the YouTube player.

That works well if you’re using Safari and primarily encounter Flash through YouTube movies. But of course, some of us use Firefox, and YouTube isn’t the only site that “needs” Flash. It’d be nice if there were a Firefox equivalent to the Safari YouTube5 extension, but so far we haven’t been able to find one.

Other areas the Flash-free plan causes pain: multi-file uploaders like those from Flickr, Vimeo and other services often need Flash to work properly; charts and graphs on news sites often rely on Flash, and of course those addictive games your friends pass around are Flash-based.

Mac blogger John Gruber has a further tip for those times you really do need Flash, when you need, in Gruber’s words, “to cheat” — use Google Chrome. Because Google’s Chrome browser ships with its own version of Flash, it’s unaffected by the uninstall process outlined by Frank and Gruber.

Gruber also has an extra, and somewhat compelling, argument for why getting rid of Flash is better than just blocking it — many publishers offer non-Flash alternatives for browsers that don’t have the plug-in, so you can still at least see something in place of the Flash content.

If you’re using Windows, the easiest way to get rid of Flash is using Adobe’s Flash Uninstaller. Just download the app, make sure you close any app that might be using Flash, and run the uninstaller. Grab a copy of Google Chrome for those times when you need Flash and you’re well on your way to a Flash free web and, quite possibly, extended battery life.

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that even HTML5 goodies like Canvas animations or videos, if left running indefinitely, will drag down your battery life just like Flash. In the web of the future, with no Flash at all, will we be blocking Canvas to stop annoying ads and save battery life? Quite possibly, but until then… enjoy.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
Oct
28
2010

Adobe Shows Off Flash-to-HTML5 Converter

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Even though its Flash technology is used as a punching bag by web standards fans, Adobe has been building tools that embrace HTML5. The company recently released its own HTML5 video player, and Adobe Illustrator and Dreamweaver CS5 now contain a number of new HTML5 export tools.

Now it seems Flash might be joining the party. At Adobe’s Max conference this week, Adobe engineer Rik Cabanier showed of a demo of tool that converts Flash animations to HTML5 (well, technically it looks like a combination of HTML5, CSS and images).

The video below, while not the best quality, shows the tool in action:

Adobe Flash has taken a beating in the last couple of years. First Apple attacked Flash for poor performance, then open tools like HTML5, CSS 3 and JavaScript began stealing much of its thunder, offering video, audio and animation — traditionally Flash’s strongholds — without the need for the free plug-in.

While rumors of Flash’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, there’s no question that, were Flash to remain what it is today, it will eventually be replaced by HTML5 tools.

Keep in mind this is just a demo, not something that’s scheduled for release any time soon. It’s also worthy noting that, despite the claims of “HTML5,” the page generated appears to be using the XHTML 1.0 doctype. Clearly this is a work in progress.

Still, even if the final project generated the kind of messy markup you see in the video, just the ability to export your animations out of Flash, even if the final code needs some clean up, would be godsend for developers that want to move their complicated Flash animations to web standards that play on devices where Flash can’t run.

[via Adobe's John Nack]

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