Google Swiffy was a web-based tool developed by Google that converted

SWF SWF ( ) is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript.Open Screen Pr ...

files to HTML5. Its main goal was to display Flash contents on devices that do not support Flash, such as iPhone, iPad, and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

Tablets. Swiffy was shut down July 1, 2016.

Approach

A closed source web service hosted by Google converts SWF to an intermediate representation serialized as

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...

. This representation is in turn converted into SVG in the web browser via JavaScript, which is also used for animations. The Swiffy thesis (2012) explains its general approach in the following way:

Supports

Google Swiffy supported a subset of SWF 10, ActionScript 2.0 and

ActionScript 3.0 ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia, Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe Systems, Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementatio ...

Supporting browsers

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

* Firefox 5+ (partly supported) * IE9 (partly supported) and

IE10 Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) is the tenth, and by now, discontinued, version of the Internet Explorer web browser and the successor to Internet Explorer 9, released by Microsoft on September 4, 2012, shortly after the completion of Windows Serv ...

* WebKit-based browsers

Development

Swiffy was started in the summer of 2011 by Google engineering intern Pieter Senster, who joined their mobile advertising team to search for solutions to display Flash content on devices that do not support Flash. Progress on Swiffy was sufficient that Google hired him full-time and formed a team to work on the project. The product manager of Google Swiffy was Marcel Gordon. Swiffy 6.0.1 was released on February 11, 2014. Swiffy was shut down July 1, 2016.

Related software

* '' Wallaby'' by

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

converts FLA files to HTML5. * Mozilla Shumway took a different approach by implementing a virtual machine for SWF in JavaScript.

References

External links

Google Swiffy Homepage

{{Adobe Flash Adobe Flash Swiffy HTML5 Scalable Vector Graphics