Google Releases Flash-to-HTML5 Flash Professional Extension

With Adobe’s recent decision to halt the development of its Flash mobile variant, the company essentially told the world that the future of the Web is not with Flash, but rather HTML5. While the company will continue to develop Flash on the desktop, mobile devices have to be considered. Without mobile Flash, the future of the technology is bleak, or almost nonexistent. But what about those who design content in Flash for a living? Google hopes to have the answer.

With the company’s “Swiffy” extension for Flash Professional, designers will be able to export their creations as HTML5. This in essence will allow them to continue using Flash for whatever purpose, and not have a fear that their creation will become obsolete in the near-future. The tech behind this isn’t perfect, in that there are limitations, but for much Flash content out there, converting to straight HTML5 should be possible. And if it isn’t, future versions of the extension might remedy that.

When a Flash project is exported to HTML5, an output box will tell you what wasn’t able to be converted (and in a screenshot sample, it appears blending modes are not convertible at this point in time). Still, with HTML5 looking to be the future definitely now, hopefully this tool will continue to be developed and prove successful enough to where Adobe Flash won’t feel like a necessity to have installed.