Google Swiffy Explained

Google Swiffy was a web-based tool developed by Google that converted SWF files to HTML5. Its main goal was to display Flash contents on devices that do not support Flash, such as iPhone, iPad, and Android Tablets. Swiffy was shut down July 1, 2016.^[1]

Approach

A closed source web service hosted by Google converts SWF to an intermediate representation serialized as JSON. 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:^[2]

Supports

Google Swiffy supported a subset of SWF 10, ActionScript 2.0 and ActionScript 3.0.

Supporting browsers

Google Chrome
Safari
Firefox 5+ (partly supported)
IE9 (partly supported) and IE10
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.^[3]

Swiffy 6.0.1 was released on February 11, 2014.

Swiffy was shut down July 1, 2016.^[1]

Related software

Wallaby by Adobe converts FLA files to HTML5.
Ruffle, a free and open source Flash emulator that is actively developed.
Mozilla Shumway took a different approach by implementing a virtual machine for SWF in JavaScript.^[4]

References

Web site: Google is killing its Swiffy tool for converting Flash files into HTML5 on July 1. 15 June 2016. venturebeat.com.
Pieter Albertus Mathijs Senster, The design and implementation of Google Swiffy: a Flash to HTML5 converter
Web site: Swiffy: convert SWF files to HTML5 - The official Google Code blog. 28 June 2011. googlecode.blogspot.com.
Web site: Shumway, Mozilla's HTML5-Based Flash Player Replacement, Lands In Firefox Nightly – TechCrunch. techcrunch.com.