Adobe President and CEO Narayen
The rising popularity of HTML5 and the declining dominance of Flash will spell tougher times ahead for Creative Suite (CS) and naturally for Adobe Systems. REUTERS

Adobe has released its Flash to HTML 5 conversion tool, codenamed Wallaby.

Wallaby is an application to convert Adobe Flash Professional CS5 files (.FLA) to HTML5 and its primary design goals were to get the best quality and performance on browsers within iOS devices like iPhone and iPad.

Wallaby has a very simple user interface, which accepts as input a FLA file and exports HTML and support files to a user-selected folder. There is also an option to launch the default application assigned for the .html extension, Adobe said.

The focus for this initial version of Wallaby is to do the best job possible of converting typical banner ads to HTML5 and supported Webkit browsers include Chrome and Safari on OSX, Windows, and iOS.

Meanwhile, Apple has improved the performance of its Safari browser in its software update to iOS 4.3 by adding the Nitro JavaScript engine, which runs JavaScript up to twice as fast as in iOS 4.2.2 allowing faster page loads.

Adobe said its conversion tool allows reusing and extending the reach of one's content to devices that do not support the Flash runtimes. Once these files are converted to HTML, a user can edit them with an HTML editing tool, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, or by hand if desired.

Adobe makes it clear that Wallaby's design goal was not to produce final form HTML ready for deployment to web pages. Instead it focuses on converting the rich animated graphical content into a form that can easily be imported into other web pages in development with web page design tools like Dreamweaver.

However, this initial version of Wallaby offers no support for conversion of ActionScript, Movies and Sound.

Wallaby is delivered as a stand-alone native AIR application installer and is a 32-bit application available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms.

Wallaby for Macintosh will work on both OS 10.5 and 10.6 although primary testing was with 10.6. For Windows, it will work with Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP although primary testing was with Windows 7.

Following table shows the features supported and unsupported by Wallaby:

Feature Implementation Status Notes
3D transforms Unsupported
ActionScript 1,2Unsupported
ActionScript 3Unsupported
Blend ModesUnsupported Unsupported by HTML or CSS
Button - visuals (normal, hover, active) SVG, CSSComplete Buttons inside of a button are not supported
Button - eventsUnsupported Requires JavaScript for actions
Compiled ClipsUnsupported Requires Actionscript support
ComponentsUnsupported Most require Actionscript and Compiled Clip support
Fills - gradients or images SVGComplete
Fills - solid colors SVGComplete
Filters (DropShadow, Glow, Blur, ColorMatrix) SVGUnsupported Supported by SVG but not Safari and Safari Mobile
Filters - Advanced (Bevel, Gradient Bevel/Glow)Unsupported No SVG, HTML, or CSS support
FrameSets HTML and JavascriptComplete
Gradients SVGComplete
Images HTML or SVGComplete A few formats have issues with alpha
Inverse KinematicsUnsupported Right click on the Armature and select 'Convert to Frame by Frame Animation'
Layers - Art/Normal SVGComplete
Layers - FolderComplete
Layers - GuideComplete
Layers - MaskSVG Mask Artwork, Webkit ClipPartial No support for multiple framesets in Mask layer, several Webkit bugs
Scale 9 graphicsUnsupported Need to dynamically scale
Paths - Cubic & Quadratic SVGComplete
ScenesComplete
Sound - Stream, EventUnsupported
Strokes - gradients or imagesUnsupported
Strokes - solid colors SVGPartial No advanced dashing (i.e. Dotted, Hatched, Stippled, Ragged)
Text - Classic Static SVGPartial Text Limitations
Text - Classic Dynamic, Input SVGPartial Text Limitations
Text - Font Embedding SVGComplete Text Limitations
Text - TLF SVGPartial Text Limitations
TimelinesPartial Nested timelines difficult and there are a few known bugs
Tweening - ShapeComplete One SVG file is created for each frame of a Shape Tween. This can cause a large number of SVG files for complex animations using Shape Tween leading to playback performance issues on iOS devices. Some of the complex cases may not convert correctly.
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