Flash On Your iPhone, Right Now
5:18 pm, January 13th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Got your iPhone ready? Great.
Go here. See the pretty animation. You just got Flash on your iPhone.
And people said it would never happen.
Thing is, it didn’t really happen. At least, not in the traditional sense. What you just saw was Gordon in action. It’s an open source Flash runtime written in JavaScript, written by Tobias Schneider. Flash doesn’t work on iPhones, but JavaScript? That’s no problem at all.
Interaction designer Paul Irish has been good enough to host some demos of Gordon in action.
Now, most of you will know that I’m no developer. I have only the vaguest idea what a Flash runtime is – a friend of mine just described it as “a thing to heat up your laptop and make the fan spin,” which is a perfect summary for a simpleton like me.
But hey, it’s Flash of a sort, working on an iPhone. And that’s, you know, a Thing. I thought you might like to know.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, Web, iPhone | Comment on this article
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so, will this allow you to view ANY website with flash????
SIvey, on January 13th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
“what a Flash runtime is ”
A Flash runtime takes Flash content and “makes it work.”
“so, will this allow you to view ANY website with flash”
Yes, but not automatically. It would have to be encoded on the page. If the page doesn’t detect a Flash plug-in, it could redirect the content through the Javascript runtime, but that’s completely up to the person creating the page.
Or the Webkit team could build it into Safari.
The problem is, it doesn’t support all of Flash, it is fairly limited at the moment, but it’s a step in the right direction. Although, all of this can already be accomplished with canvas and javascript in Webkit and FireFox
Michael, on January 13th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
….and that’s why Apple doesn’t put Flash on the iPhone. I clicked your link two minutes ago and I’m still waiting for ‘Gordon’ to interpret and load it’s Flash demo.
Yawn.
Grawlix, on January 13th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
You could at least tip your hat to Gruber when you scrape stories off his site.
Mark, on January 13th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
The long Flash is being held at bay on mobile phones, the more resources are being put into alternatives (viz., HTML5). Adobe has made a critical flaw in being stubborn, arrogant, and down right brash about it’s Flash application and porting it to mobile phones. These matters have been made far worse for the iPhone simply because Apple is notorious for not releasing their proprietary code. All of which are an unexpected bonus for those wanting alternatives to Flash for it is slow, resource hungry, and an archaic dinosaur in what it does. It is also a proprietary component that filled small but growing niche back in the day, but with the net going full multimedia, it is now in dire need of being replace (by open software).
Let’s hope people do what they can to throw bodies in the way of the Adobe Train, holding off Flash creep until HTML5 is a serious threat… then we can all let nature take it’s course.
Ideally, there is really no more place for Quicktime, Silverlight, or Flash. The net needs to move past this paradigm and bust wide open.
WS, on January 13th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Your link to the demos has botched syntax which makes me look like the author, but i’m merely hosting the demos.
Cheers
Paul Irish, on January 14th, 2010 at 12:10 am
@Mark: I didn’t see this on Daring Fireball before posting it here, and if I had done, I’d have said so.
I was alerted to it when a friend of mine mentioned it on Twitter.
Giles Turnbull, on January 14th, 2010 at 3:21 am
@Paul: apologies for the botchery, something went awry with my Markdown. Fixed now.
Giles Turnbull, on January 14th, 2010 at 3:23 am
This looks more like an animated gif than a Flash animation to my eyes… But perhaps it is a start for something better….
Marcus Rodrigues, on January 14th, 2010 at 5:42 am