Smokescreen brings Flash to the iPhone A new software bundle called Smokescreen promises to bring Flash animations and interactivity to the iPad and iPhone by converting them into JavaScript on the fly. Smokescreen is entirely written in JavaScript, and once running it downloads the Flash SWF file, decompresses and interprets it, then renders without recourse to …
So the only part of Flash it can handle is the bit you really don't want, the bl**dy adverts!
Wonderful!
Gotta laugh, it's one of the few things I agree with the Jobsworth about. My mobile does do flash, but I turned it off because it never adds anything but bandwidth overhead and clutter.
I've never found a reason to turn it on beyond annoying iphone owners.
I'm still firmly of the view that flash is what arty farty designers use because they either can't use HTML and style sheets, or that using them would "negatively impact their art". Either way I don't bother with such sites either on my mobile or on a "real" desktop browser!
Grabbing the popcorn....
Next announcement from Jobs is to ban all javascript from iPad and iPhone destroying HTML5.
To be honest although initial attempts to write a translator for Flash to JavaScript will be terrible it will get better. Maybe Adobe should just try to piss off Jobs and produce a javascript->flash translator for all site to implement for free.
No I am not anti-apple. Own an iPad myself
When i tested out the Microsoft adverts and the kitchen daily ads on the site, the smokescreen JS versions actually loaded faster than the flash version, but the batman one was about a second behind. Using firefox 3.6 btw not tested under any other browsers
Handy for webmasters though to know that their ads will be seen on more platforms but until it works on IE then it not going to be a flash ads replacement yet
So it downloads a SWF file, interprets it and plays it. So, it's a flash player. How is this not a breach of the same license conditions that make flash itself banned?
It's like yesterday's story of the image viewer that wasn't a widget container. Except that the picture clearly shows 50% of the image covered in widgets.
The Apple bans (horrid as they are) are usually very simple. And I can't see how these tricks get around them.
It's not intended as an end-user product, it will be aimed at the web advertising industry. Already they often serve a GIF if the end user has no Flash, this will give them the option to serve Smokescreen JavaScript instead. So there's no app to download, in fact an iPhone/Pod/Pad user will be none the wiser, they'll just see more animated adverts.
To stop this, Apple would have to restrict access to many websites. I doubt even Steve Jobs has the balls to do that!
Adverts in Javascript - frankly the prospect of that sounds worst than flash ads! Yay, I look forward to this appearing on all browsers (including desktops) soon. I cant wait for my firefox to start crashing randomly and pages taking years to load because of poorly coded ads in javascript.
If only there was some sort of magical add-on for browsers that could "block" "adds". Or one that could make "script" = "no". ;o)
Lessee, it converts flash ads to a format that can be run on any browser without flash, the developers claim to be open sourcing it soon....
If you listen closely, that clashing of gears you hear is Adobe backing a big rig full of cash to the developers' door before Google can get there!
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