Smokescreen! The bridge we have all been waiting for. We all know that earlier this year Apple banned Flash from ALL of its products. This caused a massive war between the two companies but the result remained the same. However, most of the Apple users faced a huge problem due to company’s current decision. One of the reasons for this decision was that Apple feared, Flash being one of the major software used for video streaming and other media related purposed, was creating a monopoly in the industry. But did Apple even stop for a second and thought of the results of their decisions? Yes it is correct that the industry was in extreme danger of falling a prey to Flash’s monopoly but did they provide an alternative? Ofcourse not!

This is where Smokescreen comes in. Due to the internet being almost ruled by Flash it was almost inevitable for such a plugin to be developed. RevShock is pioneer in this field as the owner of Smokescreen. Smokescreen is created using Javascript and HTML5 and hence requires no plug-in.

Willison, from RevShock, admits that the main purpose of Smokescreen is to ensure that Flash based ads and other streams can be run without issue and irrespective of the fact whether they are being run on a browser or iPad or iPhone.

The tool has the ability to convert SWF (Flash binary files) into animated SVG files while unzipping them with Javascript. The tool implements the code from ActionScript interpreter.

But like any new software/plug-in, Smokescreen also has certain limitations like

• Smokescreen currently works on FireFox, Chrome, Safari but not Internet explorer.
• It is limited to simple animations at the moment
• It is a bit heavy to run

But I am extremely hopeful that after sometime, when the source code of Smokescreen will be published online under “free software license”, programmers will put their brains to improving its functionality.

Smokescreen - iPad demo #1 from Chris @ RevShockAds on Vimeo.