When Google announced last year it would phase out Flash support in its Chrome browser, Flash already had limited support on mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS & Google’s own Android OS.
As a temporary solution, it offered Swiffy - a tool that could convert creative built in Flash, to HTML5 the tech that replaces Flash. This tool was meant to give those who were still building in Flash time to make the transition to newer HTML5 focused tools. These dedicated HTML5 tools can take full advantage of the new capabilities HTML5 brings such as responsive / adaptive design.
When Swiffy was used to to convert Flash to HTML5, there were two major issues:
- Swiffy didn’t always work (some reports were less than 50% of the time).
- When Swiffy did work, often the file sizes were large. This resulted in slower loading pages for consumers.
Google has now announced that Swiffy will no longer be available to convert Flash to HTML5 after July 1 2016.
While this will be challenging for digital production teams who are still building in Flash and were relying on the Swiffy conversion tool the good news is that there are amazing HTML5 design tools now available like Flexitive.com. Flexitive is driving a creative revolution, and is incredibly easy to use especially for those with a graphic design background.
Now these designers can build for touch interactivity, and creative that uses responsive design tech that automatically adapts for all the different screen resolutions that their audience access content on. Most importantly, it helps create fast loading creative with the goal of always enhancing user experience.