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Smokescreen, a JavaScript-Based Flash Player
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!"
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.
Better known as 318230.
Apple just updated its EUA to exclude javascript, Steve Jobs reports that this will improve the user experience
I just wonder how efficient it will be for the rendering times. Some flash is already bordering on bloatware. Add in taking it apart and re-rendering and I start to wonder if its worth it to wait that long.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
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!"
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.
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
A certain sort of video (the kind you can't find on Youtube) comes primarily in Flash format. This sort of video seems to drive the adoption of new technology. If this can bring said video to the iPad, sales are certain to engorge.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Adobe insisted Flash is an open platform: This will be a good test of their claims. Will they compete admirably against a JS re-implementation of their own wares (and improve their own runtime - hence Smokescreen as competition to foster improvement) or will they fight dirty?
This is running like a dream on my Mac running Safari, but I tried it on a co-workers Mac running Firefox, and it crawled...
Just for reference if you're trying this on Firefox.
What about Gordon? That one *is* open-source. Is it different from what TFS refers to in terms of goals (not current state)?
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
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.
Crap like this is why we need to buy a new computer with a faster processor every year, just to do the same shit we were able to do last year.
But this is a NEW way to watch those 15 year old videos! That alone makes it better.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Runs fine for me (OS X 10.6.3/Safari 4.0.5).
CPU usage averages 15% (of one core) on the Strong Bad demo, except during the first bit with the Cheat, where it spikes to ~40%.
Using Flash 10, CPU usage averages 8-9%, but during the same scene jumps to ~30%.
Which is pretty damn impressive for an emulator. And proves that there's really nothing Flash can do that HTML 5 can't.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
It opens SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS),follows a little ball down a wire track, knocks over domino that begins a chain of falling dominoes, the last of which frightens a chicken into laying an egg, which rolls down a ramp, cracks into a frying pan, flipped by a spring loaded spatula onto a plate with bacon attached to a remote control car, that drives it to the kitchen table. Then a counter weight pulls up the plate, puts on the table, then extracts images and embedded audio and turns them into base64 encoded data. That is a lot of trouble just because Jobs is being prissy about what runs on his over priced under powered eye candy.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
I don't buy your take on things.
I think it has a lot more to do with being the gatekeepers for content (and continuing to get a cut of the profit) than with flash content itself. They don't want people using apps and games on their platform that you didn't buy from the app store, hence no Flash or Java on the i-devices.
The point was to prove HTML5+Javascript can do everything Flash can do.
Now the next step is to do it better.
The problem with a JS based player, besides being very limited, is performance and of course cross-browser/cross-platform inconstancies. HTML 5 AJAX is way slower than Flash Player 10.1 on my Nexus One. It's slower across the board when compared to Flash, weather it's a newer PC, or old Mac.
What memory leak? From my experience, especially in recent years, it's been the developer's inexperienced bloat that's been an issue. It's up to you to manage your loops, listeners, objects created, and so on, as to keep memory and cpu usage low. It just takes competence and experience, which most of these so called Flash guys lack.
Flash Player 10.1 mobile actually prevents the poorly developed bloat from using up too many resources, even on the pages that have more than one SWF running at once. The desktop version will hopefully implement this soon.
Your comment about canvas to me says you're not that experienced with Flash. ActionScript 3's drawing API is a huge step up from Canvas. It's years ahead of SVG, or canvas, and it's not at the mercy of the browser for what it can do.
This works pretty well under the released version of Safari for OSX 10.6. In fact, in some of the samples where the flash version is provided as well, the Flash ones use more CPU then the HTML5 ones.
There is a bit of degradation in some of the graphics, but hey its better then not seeing the graphics (ok, that really depends ... if its an ad and you prefer not to see it ... whatever).
Now the question is, why can't Adobe add a feature to the Flash authoring tool to just output the HTML5 and whatever is needed, that smokescreen does in the browser?
From some of the samples it would seem like you could just "drop in" the converted version with minimal loss of quality and reach a much larger audience.
I would still prefer Flash, for the most part, go away, and this won't help that too much (initially anyway). But it seems like this would be a good way for many web sites to start using HTML5 now, while support and implementations mature, as well as giving all the Flash devs time to learn to write natively in HTML5.
And proves that there's really nothing Flash can do that HTML 5 can't.
No it doesn't. These are simple animation examples from years back . StrongBad was originally created in Flash 4. It's 2010, we're now using Flash 10.1. Flash has evolved quite a bit.
Here's a list of what Flash can do, that HTML 5 can not; http://www.wirelust.com/2010/05/21/10-things-flash-can-do-today-that-html5-cant/
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