Google Swiffy was a web-based tool developed by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

that converted SWF files to

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

. Its main goal was to display

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid ...

contents on devices that do not support

, such as iPhone,

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

, and Android Tablets. Swiffy was shut down July 1, 2016.

Approach

closed source Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and inte ...

web service hosted by Google converts SWF to an

intermediate representation An intermediate representation (IR) is the data structure or code used internally by a compiler or virtual machine to represent source code. An IR is designed to be conducive to further processing, such as optimization and translation. A "good" ...

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 JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

, 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 WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS ...

-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 A wallaby () is a small or middle-sized Macropodidae, macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same Taxonomy (biology), taxon ...

'' 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 Shumway is a discontinued media player for playing SWF files. It was intended as an open-source replacement for Adobe Flash Player. It is licensed under Apache and SIL Open Font License (OFL). Mozilla started development on it in 2012. It was pre ...

took a different approach by implementing a

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

for SWF in JavaScript.

References

External links

Google Swiffy Homepage

{{Adobe Flash Adobe Flash Swiffy HTML5 Scalable Vector Graphics