Google Swiffy

What Does Google Swiffy Mean?

Google Swiffy is a software tool released by Google Labs in June 2011. Swiffy is used to convert an Adobe Flash/Flex project into HTML5.

Advertisements

Google Swiffy allows a developer to convert a Flash animation into a browser viewable format, eliminating the need for a Flash player plug-in.

Techopedia Explains Google Swiffy

Google Swiffy takes a compiled Flash/Flex file (known as a SWF file because of its .swf file extension) as input. Swiffy converts the SWF file into an HTML5 file, Cascading Style Sheet 3 (CSS3) file, JavaScript (JS) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

There are two phases to the Swiffy conversion process, as follows:

  • The Swiffy compiler reads the input SWF file and generates a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file.
  • The JS client runtime uses the JSON file to generate HTML5, CSS3 and SVG files.

The HTML5 output file may then be embedded in a website.

Issues with the original Swiffy release included:

  • Swiffy output only ran on browsers that supported SVG.
  • Swiffy output was not easily editable by developers.
  • Swiffy only supported ActionScript 2.0 conversion, although ActionScript 3.0 was available.
Advertisements

Related Terms

Latest DevOps Terms

Related Reading

Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…