Flash-to-HTML5 Translator: Smart But Not Pretty 77
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister takes a first look at Wallaby, Adobe's experimental tool for transforming Flash content into HTML5, and finds the tool an interesting idea with little yet to offer. 'Wallaby engineers have made sound decisions in designing the tool, but what you actually get when you convert a Flash project to HTML5 is extremely limited,' McAllister writes, in large part because many Flash features are not supported, leaving developers to add their own interactivity with jQuery."
Oh boy! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh boy! An article from InfoWorld.
Let me just click the print button and watch the karma pour in.
http://infoworld.com/print/154011 [infoworld.com]
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Personally, I kind of expected to see something other than text.
There were no code examples (just explanations of the code), no images for comparison, nothing but a wall of text.
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Unfortunately, the Flash files I used weren't created by me, so I couldn't publish screenshots for comparison for copyright reasons. As for code snippets, they tend to turn off more people than they pull in. In either case, though, what you'd see wouldn't be terribly enlightening. A screenshot from Firefox or IE would reveal... a big white square. A screenshot from Chrome would look a lot like the original Flash movie; what you wouldn't see is that the animations and controls aren't working right.
As for cod
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I agree the web-version is better readable than the print-version, but in my view this mainly has to do with the line height being too small in the print version. There's almost more horizontal spacing than vertical spacing, which makes the article very tiring too read.
If you think the lines are too long for comfort, you're simply setting your browser window too wide.
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You should try Readability. They have an addon now for some reason, but the old bookmark version is still there: https://www.readability.com/bookmarklets [readability.com]
It makes any page readable (if it can figure out what the content is).
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You get karma in liquid form? I always seem to get the powder...
I like the bit about how "many Flash features are not supported" in HTML5. Doesn't strike me as a self-serving adobe-planted thing, oh no, not at all.
No. I said no, not a bit.
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I like the bit where blatantly changed the quote to make it look like some self serving adobe planted thing, when in fact it never claims that many Flash features aren't supported in HTML5, only that they're not supported by the first release of Wallaby.
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Well, in fairness, it's not Adobe's fault that you can't access connected devices (camera, mic, etc.) via HTML5. Yet [stackoverflow.com].
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If it was the only part of flash not supported we could live with it. I can actually live without flash. I actually do. But still...
Moderation (Score:1)
I wish I could mod you -1 Funny.
Does it support Homestar Runner? (Score:2)
Because that's all I want or care to know. Homestar is pretty much the only thing I need Flash for anymore. And yes I know that Smokescreen [smokescreen.us] exists but this sounds much better.
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What about redtube?
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Video tag. If they ever sort out the codec thing.
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Thank you for saving me the trouble of determining what I should be viewing. There may be a position opening up for you in the future as CEO of a large company in Cupertino.
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Except that H*R hasn't seen consistent updates since over a year ago. It's dead, and may it rest in peace.
("Shut up, lady! Peaceful is not how I roll.")
If I'm not mistaken, they released three updates in the past year: A Decemberween special, an after-Decemberween Halloween special (they joked about how they were a little late), and the April Fools Day toon last year. That's not counting the sales and other related things. Matt Chapman and Craig Zobel have been busy writing a movie called Monster Safari and a new site called Ron Planet [ronplanet.com].
Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
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A translator from one top-heavy system to another made by the company that has a vested interested in the source system, which happens to be proprietary, is not pretty. Who'd have thunk it?
Stop teasing us! (Score:2)
"Hey, here's a cool new idea you'll love... too bad you can't actually use it yet."
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I do use HTML5 as well as CSS3 on a daily basis.
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No, I'm referring to the not quite even half-finished Flash->HTML5 application mentioned in the article.
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We need to find (Score:2)
Works about as well as Google Translate. (Score:1)
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Oh wait...
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SVG on a timeline? (Score:2)
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What makes you think SVG is HTML5?
Because the article is about a piece of software that translates Flash to HTML5 plus SVG.
Clean HTML (Score:5, Insightful)
"the generated code is clean and concise -- far superior to the Save as HTML feature of Microsoft Word, for example."
Hahaha, not really saying a lot there buddy. My dog can write better HTML than M$ Word.
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Apparently his dog works in my office!
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Sure, but at least M$ word doesn't piss on the floor!
Usually.
HTML5 for Video versus HTML5 for interactivity (Score:2)
I've always been a bit frustrated that the community has been a bit shaky about distinguishing HTML5 as a video platform and HTML5 as a platform for building interactive applications. In the former context, HTML5 seems like a sure winner, especially given that flash for video was really a hackish (but necessary) expedient and not a great design choice. In the latter case, however, I have yet to see good examples of the sort of deep web applications in HTML5 that you can build with flash, to the extent that
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A quick search net me: http://glacialflame.com/ [glacialflame.com]
It's a work in progress, but considering that HTML5 isn't standard or ubiquitous... I find it interesting that they've done so much in such time.
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That's partly what Silverlight is for, though
Silverlight has all of the same drawbacks of Flash in addition to not being supported by as many platforms. There is basically no reason for anyone to use it unless by doing so they can get Microsoft to give then a bag of money, and even then you have to seriously weigh the cash against losing the ever-growing number of non-Windows customers.
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About the only other advantage that Flash has is that most browser will run Flash content without explicit permissions, and the Flash setting do not allow the opportunity for the user to hold Flash content until wa
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Of course, most browsers have Flash Block as a plugin, and sliverlight does not have such a plugin, so this may mean that Silverlight will win that part, that is the ad part, of the market in the coming year.
That seems highly unlikely. The lack of an equivalent to Flash Block is due to the unpopularity of Silverlight. If ads are delivered using Silverlight then the large plurality if not majority of people who don't have Silverlight installed won't see the ads, which defeats the purpose.
Moreover, even assuming a sufficient critical mass of people eventually install Silverlight that advertisers will be willing to ignore users without it, it will take about thirty six seconds after advertisers start using it for
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Without movies, without ads, is there actually enough of a market for Flash to support development? And outside of these markets, are there actually a large number of applications that genuinely could not be done using open standards and non proprietary tools.
What technology other than Flash do you recommend for producing something like Homestar Runner, Weebl and Bob, or most of the tons and games on Newgrounds?
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Certainly no one has demoed anything nearly as sophisticated as Farmville (leaving aside the, ahem, merits of that particular insipid application) but I'm willing to imagine that's a matter of time.
You serious? There are plenty of HTML5 games and applications much better than Farmville. Farmville of all things! At least use decent flash games.
There is even an RTS done in Canvas that was posted on here a while back i'm sure. (somewhere at least, anyone remember the name?)
WebGL-enabled games for Canvas, Quake(2 at that) was ported to that. That instantly beats any and every Flash game there is, period.
Quake 2 WebGL on google code [google.com]
The converter was probably gimped on purpose so people stick with Flas
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The converter was probably gimped on purpose so people stick with Flash.
Maybe, but I don't really see the point of that. They probably just haven't spent enough time polishing it yet.
Adobe wants to promote Flash so that people will buy Flash Creator. But the output format is irrelevant to them. If people want HTML5, it's in their interest to make Creator output HTML5 -- because all they care is that people are buying Creator.
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The converter was probably gimped on purpose so people stick with Flash.
I doubt that. It doesn't really make sense. If I'm given a tool that outputs crappy HTML5, I already know I have the option of writing HTML5 by hand. Why would I create content in Flash, then export it to crappy HTML5, instead of just implementing the same content in HTML5 myself (if HTML5 is what I want)?
Most of the stuff can be converted directly from ActionScript to JavaScript.
Not really. Or at least, it's not necessarily easy to do. ActionScript and JavaScript are different enough now that it's not a one-to-one translation. Adobe may manage it in the future, but there's probabl
Interactivity with jQuery? (Score:2)
I thought jQuery was for distributing operations over the DOM using a CSS-like element selection syntax.
Maybe they mean "interactivity with Javascript" (which is made easier to program with utilities like jQuery).
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I thought jQuery was for distributing operations over the DOM using a CSS-like element selection syntax.
it's not. it's a JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions.
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McAllister apparently thinks that Wallaby is a new development (it's several months old, in fact)
Only as a demo at Adobe events. Adobe only made the preview available for download this week.
(Adobe said that it was for non-interactive content several months ago).
Really? Strange that Adobe would spend so much time documenting interactivity in Wallaby content [macromedia.com]. (Warning: PDF.)
Wallaby's not trying to port Flash content, otherwise it'd accept SWF files as input.
I presume the main reasons it accepts FLA files only are because A.) they're easier to convert, and B.) SWF is a deployment format, and Adobe is not interested in creating a tool that would allow end users to "steal" content from other people's SWF files; you need access to the original FLA project.
What McAllister should have focused on was that Adobe will create tooling that extends the relevance of their existing products as interest shifts from one technology to another.
I beli
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CS5 FLA files are compressed directories whose structures are organized in an XML file. It is much easier to write an AIR app that processes assets in a CS5 FLA than it is to write any kind of app that parses a SWF's tags into JavaScript.
That's kind of what I meant when I said "they're easier to convert." Sorry I wasn't more literal. As for "preventing stealing," I stand by what I said -- Adobe has no incentive to create a tool that allows third parties to strip assets out of published SWF files.
Wallaby is an asset converter that may prolong the usefulness of Flash Professional, if it's released; it really has nothing at all to do with the Flash Player. There is a need for web-ready assets that Adobe can serve with an existing product.
I must admit I'm pretty confused by this comment. Flash SWF files are "Web-ready assets"... except on platforms where there is no Flash Player. I really don't see how you can claim my article "completely fails to address" this, when it's the entire
Perhaps germaine to the conversation (Score:3)
HTML5 readiness as a Flash replacement (Score:3)
Aside from all the unsupported features, what's interesting is the number of broken things that Adobe claims, at least, to be due to browser bugs. E.g.:
"There is a known Webkit issue with complex timeline animations that crashes all Webkit browsers. This seems to increase in frequency with complex animations and on slower devices."
"Prior [to 4.2] iOS versions have known masking issues with Wallaby generated HTML files."
"Zooming in and out can cause odd artifacts in the browser. This is a bug in the browser."
"Masked artwork sometimes displays a faint border around the masked area. This is a bug in the browser."
"[in Safari] A few known animation issues with 'static' content dropping."
also some of the things that they have supported, were implemented by browser-specific means:
"The only supported Webkit browsers at this time are Chrome and Safari on OSX, Windows, and iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod). Because Wallaby uses Webkit specific animation primitives, animation will not work and has not been tested on other browsers."
So, um... what about HTML5 as the purported Flash replacement, then, if a good chunk of functionality is simply not there or is browser-specific, and even of the stuff that is supposed to work, a lot does not in current browsers, because, apparently, no-one had actually tried it with the level of complexity common for Flash apps?
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What's your point? Flash is old ans HTML5 is young? Was it really necessary to write a 11 line post to make your point?
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Every time the issue of Flash vs HTML5 comes up on Slashdot, there is a slew of upmodded posts explaining how Flash is already not relevant and should be discovered, and how HTML5 can fully replace any legitimate use of Flash. I'm pointing out that this doesn't seem to be the case.
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Every time the issue of Flash vs HTML5 comes up on Slashdot, there is a slew of upmodded posts explaining how Flash is already not relevant and should be discovered, and how HTML5 can fully replace any legitimate use of Flash. I'm pointing out that this doesn't seem to be the case.
I think it's optimism mostly. A lot of people hate Flash for various reasons, many of them perhaps having to do with its perceived lack of stability, at least on Linux. So naturally people are just waiting for the moment where they can drop Flash without missing out. I'm in that category. :)
But I'm totally with you on readiness - I made an animation example last year, and the conclusion then was that you can't have big images moving in HTML without occasional flickering in any of the browsers I tried, and t
And just as I was thinking... (Score:1)
...that we would eventually get rid of all those annoying Flash ads.
I mean... have you really seen Flash being used for anything else but ads? Really. Especially those annoying ones that make all sorts of noises until you click them. The good uses of Flash I've seen are very very limited. As a developer there was even a time I was very keen on learning Flex myself. But in the end I'm very thankful Apple chose NOT to support it on their mobile devices.
I'd hate to see those ad-creators have a nice tool in the
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It shouldn't be that hard to adapt Flashblock and the like to stop the canvas tag.
And I expect browsers will quickly offer basic audio defaults so that pages don't blare audio the second they are loaded.
As long as it works for converting menus, etc (Score:1)
For the stupid sites which make their website navigation menu buttons using Flash, this should be obligatory! Surely Flash menu buttons can't be too difficult to convert.