Adobe Flash sites rapidly converted to HTML5 for iOS users

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2014
A developer using Sencha Touch reports that translating large existing websites built with Adobe Flash to HTML5 mobile sites accessible to iOS users can now be performed by 1 or 2 people in just three weeks.



Design firm Dyad Communications noted in report that its "clientele remains adamant that we develop sites that operate with a level of design sophistication and elegance that require the use of Flash for a lot of our work," something that presents a challenge for reaching mobile iOS users, for whom there is no Flash Player option.



Given that Adobe has abandoned future plans for Flash on mobile devices, and has even failed to update Flash Player to a version that can run on new Android 4.0 phones (the flagship platform supporting Adobe's Flash web-alternative), the ability to adapt Flash websites to work on mobile devices that don't support Flash has expanded even beyond Apple's iOS.



While Adobe has announced initiatives to throw its support behind creating tools to deploy standards-based HTML5 content, Sencha has already put its had into the ring with Sencha Touch, a framework designed to create Flash-like mobile web experiences that don't require plugins like Flash or Microsoft's similarly moribund Silverlight. Dyad portrayed a variety of mobile sites it has built with Sencha Touch to reach iOS users on iPads, iPhones and iPod touch.







Sencha Touch brings features commonly associated with Flash experiences to standard HTML5, such as integrated audio and video presentation, a carousel display of images that users can flick through, or the ability to connect to existing content management systems to present data on the web.



By simplifying the task of moving rich content to standard HTML5, Dyad says that Sencha Touch allows it "to create mobile re-interpretations that feel as rich as their desktop counterparts," and to do so in just a few weeks even on large projects. Smaller projects ported from Flash can be developed "in a matter of days" the company states. Using such a framework also makes it easier to ensure mobile experiences work well across different mobile browsers.



Sencha has previously profiled how well various mobile browsers support modern web standards, and has made efforts to bridge deficiencies in its tools. The tools vendor recently put Amazon's Kindle Fire through a series of tests, as it has previously done with Apple's iPad 2 and iOS 5, Android 2.x tablets like the Galaxy Tab, Android 3.x Honeycomb tablets like the Motorola Xoom, and RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook.



Sencha has also unveiled a new "Sencha Certified Partners Program" for system integrators and web developers who specialize in JavaScript, HTML5 and open Web technologies to showcase their work and generate leads among companies looking to build HTML5 projects.



The Redwood City, California company calls itself "the leading provider of HTML5 frameworks and tools for desktop and mobile application developers," and now counts 1.6 million developers among its global community spanning more than 150,000 companies.

«13

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 48
    AND SO IT BEGINS. All caps workaround.
  • Reply 2 of 48
    This should make everyone here very happy. I know you all hate the Flash.



    What would make me happy is the end of visiting websites that have a big hole in them where the video's would go.
  • Reply 3 of 48
    ivladivlad Posts: 742member
    How nice to see everything working and not crashing on all devices. HTML5 is gonna make the web look amazing.
  • Reply 4 of 48
    I wouldn't have an issue with flash as much as if it had a MOBILE version. For example, when I go to GameTrailers on my vibrant, it's loading the full video and loads and freezes and stuff. Plus it's really hard to resize it.



    HOWEVER, it converts it on my iPhone 4S with a much easier, smoother (stutter free) process.



    HTML5 FTW.
  • Reply 5 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Obama View Post


    This should make everyone here very happy. I know you all hate the Flash.



    What would make me happy is the end of visiting websites that have a big hole in them where the video's would go.



    What kind of hole?
  • Reply 6 of 48
    Just take a look at Pentax' websites. They were totally flash and are now all HTML.



    http://www.pentaximaging.com



    http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/
  • Reply 7 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by linkgx1 View Post


    What kind of hole?



    Where there's a blank area left by the bounding box of the DIV that holds a Flash video.
  • Reply 8 of 48
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    This site has a lot of good slams against Flash…
  • Reply 9 of 48
    Now just let us Safari no-flash users stream HTML5 to our Macs.
  • Reply 10 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Where there's a blank area left by the bounding box of the DIV that holds a Flash video.



    Lol, I know. Usually say there's a lego block or something, I just found the hole reference funny!
  • Reply 11 of 48
    HTML5 is clearly the future, and Sencha is great. But this article reads like an advertisement.
  • Reply 12 of 48
    diddydiddy Posts: 282member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by trip1ex View Post


    Now just let us Safari no-flash users stream HTML5 to our Macs.



    Frame your browser as the mobile version of Safari and you get those pages. It?s all in how the sites are seeing your browser - they do this for their mobile users only. Probably because of screen space more than anything.
  • Reply 13 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by diddy View Post


    Frame your browser as the mobile version of Safari and you get those pages. It?s all in how the sites are seeing your browser - they do this for their mobile users only. Probably because of screen space more than anything.



    And that's the thing: they need to do it for all users. Some of us took one look at Flash 11.2 beta and said "Welp, you've had your chance. You've had seventy chances. You suck. That's it."



    ? Some of us.
  • Reply 14 of 48
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    . . .Given that Adobe has abandoned future plans for Flash on mobile devices, and has even failed to update Flash Player to a version that can run on new Android 4.0 phones.



    Actually Adobe is updating Flash for ICS before the end of the year.

    http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/21/ice...d-of-the-year/



    With that said, I won't be one of those sad to see it go away. That bloated crash-prone software has few peers, and I only run a single laptop that has it installed. Dumping both iTunes and Flash has made a world of difference on a couple of older computers. They almost felt new again.



    By the way, Swiffy is another great option for converting existing Flash animations to HTML5 with a minimum of effort.

    http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/06...ns-into-html5/
  • Reply 15 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by essex sound lab View Post


    HTML5 is clearly the future, and Sencha is great. But this article reads like an advertisement.



    +1. I felt the same way. Too bad, we don't know quite what HTML5 really is. All the browser vendors seem to have a slightly different vision.
  • Reply 16 of 48
    bongobongo Posts: 158member
    Put down your smug mug for two seconds and check out the site for the company being promoted by Senchas press release: http://dyadcom.com
  • Reply 17 of 48
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bryanl View Post


    +1. I felt the same way. Too bad, we don't know quite what HTML5 really is. All the browser vendors seem to have a slightly different vision.



    Correct. The final specifications still haven't been set.
  • Reply 18 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bongo View Post


    Put down your smug mug for two seconds and check out the site for the company being promoted by Senchas press release



    Beautiful site (a little heavy on all the wrong oranges, however), and it's a shame because everything it does can easily be done in HTML?
  • Reply 19 of 48
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post


    Correct. The final specifications still haven't been set.



    It is the Javascript/CSS that is doing all the fancy stuff not HTML per se. When the specs are finalized we will still need -ms, -webkit and -moz prefixes for things like rounded corners, shadows, etc. Probably for another five years at least. So it is not like all browsers are reading the same code. And you still have to test it in all those browsers as well. Animations and transitions are very tedious to code in JS, no two ways about it. We have dozens of frameworks, but no good timeline layers authoring environment. The last thing we need is another framework.
  • Reply 20 of 48
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post


    Correct. The final specifications still haven't been set.



    Ever since the creation of the WHATWG group, the finalization of the specs is completely irrelevant. These are the people driving HTML5 (they are essentially the browser makers, Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Google), and W3C, the specs writers, have largely become bystanders in this whole process.
Sign In or Register to comment.