Get Flash On Your iDevice With Smokescreen
by Robb Lewis
June 3, 2010
If you've got an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, one thing is for sure - you are not getting Flash. Not now, not ever. Smokescreen is a new open-source project that aims at getting Flash-based elements onto iDevices without using a plugin.
Smokescreen is a Flash player that is written in JavaScript and can currently convert small parts of Flash content such as banner ads and swf videos. It also supports some input capabilites for items such as games and other interactive elements. Smokescreen is currently in beta and they have some demos that you can view over on their website.
So who will actually benefit from Smokescreen? Mainly Flash developers. What Smokescreen does is 'wrap' the Flash content into its own player, which then enables the content to be viewed on any browser (including mobile Safari). Rather than recreating the whole element in HTML5, which has more open standards, developers can simply insert a few lines of javascript along with their previously created Flash content and it will work on any iDevice.
The second group that will benefit are iDevice users. Although I do use the word 'benefit' loosely. As a user you will be able to view and interact with Flash content without the need for any additional software (like a Flash plugin). On the other hand, who actually enjoys banner ads telling us to download a new set of smileys any way?
Although in principal I like the idea, but I think the majority of us have gotten used to idea of not having flash. What are we really missing out on? Will this slow down the proliferation of HTML5? What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments.
