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Smokescreen, a JavaScript-Based Flash Player

Posted by kdawson on from the now-to-optimize dept.

Tumbleweed writes "How to make Steve Jobs your mortal enemy: Smokescreen, a 175KB, 8,000-line JavaScript-based Flash player written by Chris Smoak at RevShock, a mobile ad startup, and to be open-sourced 'in the near future.' From Simon's blog: 'It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio, and turns them into base64 encoded data: URIs, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG. ... Smokescreen even implements its own ActionScript bytecode interpreter.' Badass!"

11 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Impressive by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Very impressive! However, given Flash's performance issues even when compiled natively for mobile devices, this is more of a proof of concept then something usable.

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    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Impressive by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      most people or most nerds? I don't think most people even get ABP, even if they run Firefox, let alone actually know what Javascript is or that its something that can be disabled. Turn off JS these days, and practically nothing works. better would be a plug-in which just prevents Smokescreen from being loaded in particular.

    2. Re:Impressive by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On a side note, why are people suddenly so in love with the term "infographic"? Can't we call it a "graph" or "chart"?

    3. Re:Impressive by God'sDuck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On a side note, why are people suddenly so in love with the term "infographic"? Can't we call it a "graph" or "chart"?

      It is because your boss's nephew knows how to make graphs and charts. Never word anything in a way that might cause you to be replaced by your boss's nephew.

    4. Re:Impressive by oasisbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On a side note, why are people suddenly so in love with the term "infographic"? Can't we call it a "graph" or "chart"?

      First, infographics isn't a new term, it's a been around since the early 1990s, at least.

      Second, infographics is a more inclusive category than charts or graphs. Charts and graphs tend to be quantitative in nature. A good example of an infographic is a map: calling a subway map a chart is a stretch. (Yes, I'm aware of nautical and aeronautical charts.)

      So, when Dan suggests that Flash has legitimate uses for infographics, I think that's a perfectly legitimate use of the term.

    5. Re:Impressive by aliquis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Times I've used a webcam or mic on flash: 0

  2. No, they'll be Steve Jobs' Best Friend by mveloso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jobs doesn't care about flash content, he cares about flash. If the flash content can be used without flash itself, well, that'd be great.

    Not sure why, but slashdot's headline writers are starting to sound more and more like tabloid writers. Why not say "Smokescreen to Adobe: flash off!"

    1. Re:No, they'll be Steve Jobs' Best Friend by famanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Jobs doesn't care about flash content, he cares about flash.

      Sorry but that's just not true. Did you miss the recent uproar about the new iPhone SDK agreement? The new agreement bans any applications that were not natively written in C/C++/Objective C. This updated agreement was released only weeks before Adobe CS5 was to debut with advanced tools that would allow the porting of flash apps to the iPhone. If flash itself was the problem then such a clause would not have been added.

  3. Javascript trumps Flash? by RLBrown · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My take is that this proves, perhaps to a significant degree if not completely, that Javascript/HTML5 can do anything that a native Flash engine could do . So why build in Flash? Go straight to Javascript/HTML5. I do not think Steve Jobs will be unhappy about this at all.

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    -- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
  4. Why on apple.*? by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Other than Apple's non-support of Flash on the iPad, this has nothing to do with Apple. This is an Adobe Flash emulator written in JavaScript.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion