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Adobe Releases Flash To HTML 5 Converter
An anonymous reader writes "Adobe has released its Flash to HTML 5 conversion tool, codenamed 'Wallaby.' Wallaby is an application to convert Adobe Flash Professional CS5 files (.FLA) to HTML5 and its primary design goals were to get the best quality and performance on browsers within iOS devices like iPhone and iPad."
Only time will tell, in terms of Adobe's specific implementation; but given that Flash consists of Actionscript(practically Javascript), bitmap and vector graphics(canvas/SVG), A/V decode support for specific codecs(HTML5 video), and flash cookies/data storage(HTML5 local data store), there is no broad reason to expect that HTML5(at least in the medium term) shouldn't be able to do the majority of Flash stuff(omitting specific cases like some special streaming capabilities and DRM) with efficiency on roughly the same order as Flash(better if the browser maker is more competent/platform integrated than Adobe, worse if they are less competent, or if Adobe's conversion tool produces pathological code)...
Unfortunately, drawing lots and lots of fancy vectors with an interpreted language is always going to be more computationally expensive than more... restrained... tastes in web design; but at least it won't all be crammed into a proprietary runtime with a ghastly security record...
Q: How is Adobe going to react to HTML5?
A: I wouldn’t say reacting to HTML5. We see whatever people are using to express themselves. We’re going to make great tooling for HTML5. We’re going to make the best tools in the world for HTML 5.
It’s not about HTML 5 vs Flash. They’re mutually beneficial. The more important question is the freedom of choice on the web.
AccountKiller
If VB and C were based on the same standard, you might have a point.
Recent versions of JavaScript and ActionScript are both (partial or complete) implementations of ECMAScript version 3.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
ActionScript is practically JavaScript? Good god, that's like saying VB is practically C.
If I've got my version numbers right....
ActionScript 1 was an implementation of ECMAScript - i.e. the language was virtually identical to Javascript.
ActionScript 2 diverged from Javascript in that it included some elements that were being discussed for the next version of ECMAScript but never materialised (e.g. class-based OOP).
ActionScript 3 diverged a bit more (e.g. package-management stuff).
...AFAIK most of this was just "syntactic sugar" so, e.g. you can declare a class Java-style rather than creating a function and appending methods to its prototype JS-style. So cross-compiling ActionScript to Javascript should be mainly a job of translating shortcuts added in AS2&3 back into "longhand"
Of course, that's just the language - the Flash API is nothing like HTML DOM, but SVG seems a fairly good substitute for Flash's vector graphics. Pity that, unlike Apple, Android disabled SVG in their web browser (people forget that when they're ragging on iOS for not having Flash...) :-(
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
OTOH, Adobe makes their money from selling Flash authoring tools. I'm sure they couldn't give a crap less what the target format for their tools is, if people still buy their authoring tools. Being able to dump the expense of maintaining and distributing the Flash player, but still selling authoring tools that output HTML5 and let Flash slowly die? Sounds like a damn good business decision.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.