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Smokescreen - a Flash player written in Javascript and HTML5
- EricButler 16y agoVery cool. I look forward to a Chrome extension that automatically replaces flash objects with this.
- al_james 16y agoWhy would you want to do that for? You would still have the annoying ads (or whatever) plus the overhead of a chrome extension to convert them when the page loads!
- megablast 16y agoClearly somebody who really likes flash ads, but for some reason doesn't like adobe?
- watty 16y agoYet he doesn't realize he's supporting Adobe and Flash...
- EricButler 16y agoI don't like flash on the web, but I do occasionally run across a site that requires flash for navigation. I thought an extension would be interesting. Also, I have an ad blocker.
- noibl 16y agoIf you wanted to be able to drop your Flash plugin I could understand, but Chrome bundles Flash so...hm.
- bnoland 16y agoDo the demos work on the iPhone?
- NathanKP 16y agoVery interesting! Running the Smokescreen JavaScript flash player did not cause my battery life to go down like normal flash does. I always watch that when I am running a flash YouTube video or flash game. It will be interesting to see how the performance works with more complex games.
- not_an_alien 16y agoDid you run Smokescreen with the same SWF you used in FP? How long was your test, and what was the battery drop in both? Tell me you're not comparing the decompression and rendering of a video against a simple animation.
- sheldonwt 16y agoThis could be a very revolutionary way to port flash to the IPad. There seems like an enormous value potential for that if it works well.
- d0m 16y agosmart!
- d0m 16y agoI can't believe I've been downed because I found something smart.
- lotharbot 16y agoWe at Hacker News prefer comments that have valuable, thoughtful, substantial ideas contained in them. Your first comment expressed very little. It would have been better to simply upvote the thread; saying "smart" or "I agree" or "good idea" tells us nothing more than your vote would have. It makes for boring reading, and as such, it gets downvoted as a form of discouragement. Complaining about downvotes makes for even more boring reading. Instead of complaining, learn from the experience. If you want to express "I agree" or "good idea", just click the little up arrow. Only post a comment if you have something substantial to say.
- d0m 16y agoThanks for your explanation. I honestly didn't think saying "smart" was a way to bored readers but if you guys say so, I take not of it.
- recampbell 16y agoThere is also Gordon: http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/ http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/
- agotterer 16y agoWhat are the footprint differences between the two? I assume FLV is compiled and optimized for running in the flash plugin...
- sosuke 16y agoNone of the demos they show that I saw playback FLVs, where are you looking at those? Also worth noting that in one of their demos they say that it only supports up to a "sizable subset of Flash 8" for playback currently. From: http://smokescreen.us/demos/intro.html http://smokescreen.us/demos/intro.html
- agotterer 16y agoWhoops. I meant SWF. I'm wondering the footprint difference between the converted HTML5/JS code vs the compiled SWF.
- Sthorpe 16y agoIts amazing that Apple has caused innovation by banning flash. I wonder if this is sustainable, maybe an example of innovation?
- snprbob86 16y agoI think it is just further proof that necessity is the mother of invention. Flash was invented out of a need for artists to be able to create animations on the web. Now there is a back catalog of Flash content which is losing a home. A swf player of some kind is needed to preserve that content. Someone had to build this.
- Sthorpe 16y agoI completely agree with you. However, I don't think this is a invention directly out of necessity. Instead, I would say closed systems with a controlled goal might be the fertilizer for a better design.
- Psyonic 16y agoPerhaps, but this is very much a "broken-window theory" type of innovation. If this undoubtedly smart developer hadn't needed to work on this to get around Apple's policy, who knows what more progressive achievement he could have accomplished?
- chaosmachine 16y agoPosted 3 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1387981 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1387981
- earcar 16y agoI'm sorry I haven't noticed. But I do have noticed http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1387630 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1387630 because it points to the page I was posting, the homepage. Too bad it hasn't became very popular
- kierank 16y agoWhat I don't understand is all the people praising HTML5 because it uses less CPU than Flash yet Chrome ends up using 15-20% CPU just to render a simple animation unlike Flash.
- zweben 16y agoSome people probably just assume that switching to HTML5 content always uses fewer CPU resources. There are plenty of informed reasons to prefer HTML content over Flash though. One is that putting performance into the hands of multiple companies will introduce competition. Just like with Javascript speeds, you can expect browser-makers to start racing in other areas of HTML5 performance. I wouldn't be surprised to see HTML5 outperform equivalent Flash content in a year or so.
- kierank 16y agoAnyone could equally write their own version of Flash; the standard is freely available.
- wmf 16y agoThe amount of work required to do so is epic, and considering the rate of Flash's evolution it's like getting on a treadmill whose speed is controlled by Adobe.
- not_an_alien 16y agoFunny metaphor, and very accurate. However, HTML5 is like that same treadmill, only that people still have to build the treadmill itself. It's epic work times two.
- chc 16y agoHTML5 is mostly based on existing de facto standards. If you stick to those, you're good with HTML5.
- 16y ago
- raganwald 16y agoIf this means that animated advertisements and other ad agency annoyances will be coming soon to my iPad web browsing experience, put me down as a detractor.
- jcl 16y agoThe sad thing: the ads were coming anyway. If you build a popular platform like the iPad, the advertisers will find a way to get ads on it, whether it's with Flash or not. But by banning Flash, Apple is pushing advertisers to HTML/Javascript, which ruins the experience for those marginal, blissful few who use Flash blockers on other platforms. Really, you couldn't have asked for a better indicator, short of a mandatory <lowvaluecontent> tag. :)
- raganwald 16y agoHmmm... I wonder if we could build a bayesian filter for ad blocking rather than deal with explicit blacklists?
- john_oshea 16y agoI suspect (OK, I'd like if) someone will release a spamassassin/dspam variant targeted at ads as a proxy, optionally with some distributed Pyzor goodness thrown in. In an ideal world, it would be open-source and locally-installable, a la Privoxy. In a slightly-less-than-ideal world, it'll be hosted somewhere "out there". It will probably be wonderful for 6-12 months, then bog down as everyone starts using it, then the site owners will use it to start serving ads themselves. At which point their only hope for any kind of redemption will be if they've called the service some variant on 'samsara': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saṃsāra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saṃsāra
- nailer 16y agoThe question is not whether you can, but whether you should. People who make things deserve to get paid. If you don't like what they make, fine, don't read it. If you try and rip other people's content sponsors with a bayesian content classifier they'll be more likely to have subtler 'product placement' style sponsorship to avoid your ad ripper. They may also have things that appear as ads to your rip app that are required to navigate or read the site. However, rather than avoid a technical war, why not consider either going somewhere else or accepting that content you like is made by people who like being compensated for it?
- ars 16y agoThis needs to be packaged as a firefox addon and be completely transparent. It would be great.
- perpetuity 16y agoRegular old video files FTW! There is _nothing_ revolutionary about this, NOT if you consider this a backdoor for flash content on Mobile Safari.
- amanuel 16y ago#1 proof why Flash isn't needed anymore.
- watty 16y agobecause their SWF format has been open for years and someone wrote another HTML 5 renderer that works with a subset of Flash content and performs terrible?
- mtholking 16y agoI would really like to see a support table for smokescreen like Gordon has here: http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/swf-tag-support-table/ http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/swf-tag-support-ta...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- apgwoz 16y agoIn Chrome on Mac, the techno Strongbad Email played perfectly fine, and my computer didn't burn me. I'd say it's a success, though still lots of room to grow I imagine.
- mitjak 16y agoNevermind that: how does he generate those awesome avatars?!
- ZeroGravitas 16y agohttp://www.splitbrain.org/projects/monsterid http://www.splitbrain.org/projects/monsterid
- antipaganda 16y agoFor all those people decrying this, and asking why the hell anyone would want Flash at all: Some of us would like to play Flash games on the iOS. That, and the porn. That is all.
- pizzaman 16y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4 yes, it's all still being improved and the engines will be a lot faster in a few years, but how about first creating a true alternative, then start bashing flash. I don't mind getting rid of flash, but please, lets try to move forward with technology at the same time. Not two steps back, just to remove a competitor so we end up at the same point three years later...
- pizzaman 16y agowell, that comment was not really related to smokescreen...just the general anti-flash movement.