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I hope as the web moves on we find an easy way of preserving a lot of the creative work that's been done in Flash. Some sort of WebGL/asm.js/WebAssembly player

by danbolt 10y ago

I hope as the web moves on we find an easy way of preserving a lot of the creative work that's been done in Flash. Some sort of WebGL/asm.js/WebAssembly player for SWFs on the internet archive would be the pipe dream, I think. That way we could watch Strong Bad long after Flash is available in the future.

JetSpiegel 10y ago
That's Mozilla's Shumway, a SWF player in Javascript.
- technojunkie 10y ago
  Shumway's potential is lost now. I would love for Firefox to take on the same model as Chrome and bundle Flash in the browser and Shumway was a half-baked way to do this.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  Shumway is DOA without the direct help from Adobe. That's not the first time someones tries to develop an open source flash player. They all failed.
  - SXX 10y ago
    There just wasn't enough work and money put into these open source players. For instance there is proprietary Flash implementation called Scaleform used for games UI. Even long ago before Autodesk acquired them it's had both decent compatibility with normal SWF as well as full GPU acceleration for every platform possible include Linux.
    - shinymark 10y ago
      I've used Scaleform a good amount. It's not 100% compatible with stock Flash but it's pretty darn close in the use cases I've been exposed to. Scaleform has a complex code base but clearly it is possible to reverse engineer the Flash runtime and make a compatible player.
- cocotino 10y ago
  Funny that https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ makes Chrome crash immediately.
  - SXX 10y ago
    Works for me on Chrome 52 / Linux.
    - MertsA 10y ago
      Same here, also on Linux
vikbez 10y ago
There is https://github.com/ienaga/swf2js https://github.com/ienaga/swf2js that works really well.
hutzlibu 10y ago
Hm, to view old content, you can also use the old flashplayer - so nothing is lost. I doubt, that creating a new flash-player on webgl/wasm base is worth the effort, as it would be very complex. (because contrary to popular opinion adobes flash engineers were pretty good) But you may give it a try ...
dublinben 10y ago
There's also GNU Gnash[0] which specifically features Homestar Runner on their homepage. [0]https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

by danbolt 10y ago

JetSpiegel 10y ago

That's Mozilla's Shumway, a SWF player in Javascript.

technojunkie 10y ago
Shumway's potential is lost now. I would love for Firefox to take on the same model as Chrome and bundle Flash in the browser and Shumway was a half-baked way to do this.
spriggan3 10y ago
Shumway is DOA without the direct help from Adobe. That's not the first time someones tries to develop an open source flash player. They all failed.
- SXX 10y ago
  There just wasn't enough work and money put into these open source players. For instance there is proprietary Flash implementation called Scaleform used for games UI. Even long ago before Autodesk acquired them it's had both decent compatibility with normal SWF as well as full GPU acceleration for every platform possible include Linux.
  - shinymark 10y ago
    I've used Scaleform a good amount. It's not 100% compatible with stock Flash but it's pretty darn close in the use cases I've been exposed to. Scaleform has a complex code base but clearly it is possible to reverse engineer the Flash runtime and make a compatible player.
cocotino 10y ago
Funny that https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ makes Chrome crash immediately.
- SXX 10y ago
  Works for me on Chrome 52 / Linux.
  - MertsA 10y ago
    Same here, also on Linux

vikbez 10y ago

There is https://github.com/ienaga/swf2js https://github.com/ienaga/swf2js that works really well.

hutzlibu 10y ago

Hm, to view old content, you can also use the old flashplayer - so nothing is lost. I doubt, that creating a new flash-player on webgl/wasm base is worth the effort, as it would be very complex. (because contrary to popular opinion adobes flash engineers were pretty good) But you may give it a try ...

dublinben 10y ago

There's also GNU Gnash[0] which specifically features Homestar Runner on their homepage. [0]https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/