Flash is coming to the iPad and iPhone (and anything else that runs the iPhone OS), but it’s not what you think – a new technology called Smokescreen has entered the fray, with its sights set on making Flash accessible to iPads around the world through the magic of JavaScript (and HTML5). The tech is intended for displaying Flash ads on the iPad and iPhone OS, but the project has deeper ramifications for viewing Flash-based websites on an iDevice.
When it comes to Adobe Flash technology, there’s an ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe over how to best serve up right media – like embedded videos and interactive websites – on mobile devices like the iPhone or Android smartphones. In one corner, we have Apple and the iPhone OS getting cozy with HTML5. In the other corner, we have Adobe Flash getting cozy with Android (and just about every other smartphone platform out there). That’s how things have been for what seems like ages. Today, Smokescreen becomes the newest player in this Flash-for-mobile-devices soap opera. Smokescreen is a brand new open-source JavaScript project that is essentially a “a Flash player written in JavaScript.”
What does that mean for you? Well, despite mobile ad firm RevShock’s stated goal of using Smokescreen to enable Flash-based ads on the iPad, it has ability to convert all kinds of Flash content to a format that’s compatible with an iPad or iPhone. That means Flash videos and interactive menus might soon be viewable on any of your iPhone OS-powered devices.
How does it work? We’re not too sure, but we think there’s probably some pixie dust and black magic involved. As far as we can tell, Smokescreen is a 175KB piece of JavaScript that weighs in at 8,000 lines of code. It uses JavaScript to deconstruct Flash and then pieces it back together in an iPhone OS-compatible format. Then, it displays the compatible code using HTML5. We think.
Regardless of whether or not we understand the tech, the video demo of a Flash ad running on an iPad is simply inspiring. Today, Flash ads on iPad. Tomorrow? All kinds of Flash-based websites on iPad (cough, porn, cough… and Hulu)!
Watch Smokescreen demo video after the break!
[Via: Gizmodo, Smokescreen, Simon Willison]