Flash is coming to the iPhone, thanks to Gordon

Dan Warne
15 January 2010, 4:12 PM


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Flash is coming to the iPhone, but it's no thanks to Adobe or Apple. It's thanks to Gordon.


Developer Tobias Schneider created the software called "Gordon" which allows Flash apps to display on the iPhone. It's a Flash interpreter written in Javascript, the language which is supported by all web browsers, including the iPhone, for allowing elements on web pages to be interactive, without requiring a full page refresh. Javascript is heavily used in web apps like Gmail and Facebook, but until now has been mostly used in its pure form -- it generally isn't used to interpret other languages.

Schneider (pictured right, next to Flash Gordon) married up Javascript with the iPhone's inbuilt support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open-source competitor to Flash, which hasn't taken off to the same extent as Flash, due to the fact that Adobe had years of head-start in terms of getting the software installed on virtually all PCs.

The catch is that websites will have to be updated to include "Gordon" in their code, as it's not an app that installs on the iPhone. It sits in the code of the webpage and provides instructions to the iPhone's Safari browser on how to display Flash files.

The software is still in a very early stage, with Scheider noting in his browser compatibility table that it doesn't work at all in the Opera browser, and in Safari, colour transformation currently does not work. He also hasn't yet written any documentation on how to implement it, however you can check out the source code here.

Schneider also said in his Twitter comments about Gordon that it currently only supports the SWF 1.0 format, which all versions of Flash right through to CS4 can save down to, and he is now working on adding support for the SWF 2.0 file format.

You can see some Flash demos on a page that has Gordon installed here.

The lack of Flash support on the iPhone OS has been one of the biggest complaints against it, preventing iPhone users from browsing many websites that are built in Flash, and preventing advertisers from reaching iPhone users with interactive Flash ads. Adobe has hinted that it has got Flash working on the iPhone, but that Apple won't allow it to be released under the current iPhone Appstore restrictions.

Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said Flash runs too slowly on the iPhone, industry pundits have also observed that Apple has a strong vested interest in making the iPhone OS the mobile development platform of choice, and if developers could produce apps in Flash that would work on any handset, it could reduce the iPhone's popularity as the "app" phone.

Jobs does have a point, though -- Flash advertisements on web pages are a prime culprit for CPUs going into overdrive as they struggle to keep up with animating many web pages in different tabs at once. That amount of constantly-running animation could be troublesome for the iPhone's battery life.

However, if Gordon gets to a state of completeness that would make it attractive to web developers, there may be nothing Apple can do to stop Flash on the iPhone, short of maliciously blocking the specific script from loading in iPhone Safari.


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HariSeldon (New user):

Dan, I think you've got the wrong picture ... don't think that's a picture of Flash Gordon on the left, as you mention in your article. Looks like 'Ming the Merciless' to me!

15 January 2010, 4:29 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

djsflynn (APC staff):

That is indeed Ming the Merciless, as portrayed by Max von Sydow in the laughable 1980 'Flash Gordon' movie.

15 January 2010, 4:52 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Dan Warne (Regular user):

ahahaha, oh dear, I am hopeless with pop culture. Will fix!

15 January 2010, 6:37 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

petert (Advanced Forumologist):

I preferred "Ming the Merciless" :-)

15 January 2010, 6:56 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Zig (New user):

These guys should develop a version of Flash for 64 browsers on Windows!

Adobe have been promising it for years but they really don't seem interested in keeping up-to-date.

15 January 2010, 7:57 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (User):

Linus 64 bit users are way ahead on that front. A "pre-release" version was released ages ago for them.

15 January 2010, 8:27 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

isicko (New user):


Would you like some fun games and humour, out this new iphone app called iSICKO
Shake to clear the screen and try another puke at random

http://bit.ly/986BGN

10 February 2010, 1:50 AM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

back2dos (New user):

whoops. please delete this one.

01 March 2010, 8:44 AM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

back2dos (New user):

"[SVG] hasn't taken off to the same extent as Flash, due to the fact that Adobe had years of head-start in terms of getting the software installed on virtually all PCs."

I'm sorry, but although there is a little truth in your statement, I totally disagree with the perspective. I'd like to give you my personal oppinion of how and why flash took of, and why SVG did not (yet?).
1. SVG was actually developed by Adobe amongst others, and Adobe were one of its strongest supporters. In fact, for years they provided the best and most widely spread browser plugin to add SVG support to all browsers. They bought flash, because they couldn't kill it.
2. Flash reached its big market share about 10 years ago, while still owned by Macromedia and on key was the very important support of Microsoft, being shipped with Windows XP.
3. SVG wasn't even proposed, when flash already had 90% penetration. It's signifficantly younger. Macromedia had a head-start, because they created something, where there was nothing.
4. SVG has had a competitor (VML) since its birth.
5. SVG is a spec, Flash Player is working software. A few years ago, it was still some esoteric thing. Noone knew why it was good, except it was a standard and even a W3C recommendation. And because it was human readable, at least at the same level as code-golf perl source code.
6. SVG is a nice idea, Flash is a product. It's made to work and to sell, and not to make the world a happier place. So, surprisingly, it doesn't necessarily make the world a better place. But it works and it sells. It's made by a bunch of people who know how to make products that work and sell, and not by a bunch of people who'll write endless specs that are so overly complicated and bloated, that the worst possible reference implementation would be a better guide.
7. XML is a mistake. It's big, error prone, verbous, bloated and overly complicated. Looking at SVG actually proves the point. Looking at nodes with attributes 2000 characters long, shows that the only good way to base SVG on XML was to totally misuse of XML. And SMIL is the pinacle of it all.
8. SVG is a graphics format. Noone cares whether its human readable. People care about size, at least on the web.
9. SVG is only a graphics format. SWF includes graphics and executable code. Flash player is a platform allowing to create applications. SVG is just yet another way to store vector data. You don't need to store your graphics within an SWF. There are plenty of ActionScript SVG libs out there, that allow parsing and displaying SVG at runtime within flash.
10. Flash provides the same experience accross all browsers. With SVG you're happy, if any experience is provided. IE's market share is still high. It is still hindering the breakthrough of SVG, HTML5, CSS3 and the upcoming WebGL, and will be in the foreseable future. Until this changes, proprietary solutions as Flash will have their place.

01 March 2010, 9:06 AM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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