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Smokescreen Enables Flash on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch

An open source project called Smokescreen may be the answer to running Flash on devices by Apple. Simon Willison explains how it works.

“[Smokescreen] runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64 encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG.”

In other words, Smokescreen works because it translates Flash into Javascript and then converts it into the all-friendly SVG format. The strategy works well with banner ads as shown in the video above, but tests on the 3GS revealed a less than ideal Flash-centric gaming experience.

Is this the future on Apple devices? We suppose only time will tell.