Yesterday, Tobias Schneider @tobeytailor released his JavaScript Flash runtime – Gordon. This runtime allows Flash swfs to run on the iPhone in Safari. Although currently Gordon only supports Flash Player 1 (that’s not a typo), this is pretty monumental. It’s a great step in the right direction in getting Flash on the iPhone. This looks pretty much like a precursor to what Adobe sneaked at MAX in October 2009. There they showed how Flash could be rendered with HTML5 canvas tag. The difference here is that this is the actual swf playing. It’s actually JavaScript turning the Flash to SVG.

It should be said that Gordon is not the actual Flash Player, but some JavaScript wizardry that somehow renders Flash on those oh-so-beloved-yet incredibly-frustrating-for-the-Flash-Community iDevices.

** Edit: 01/21/10
Peter Elst states in his blog post:

To be very clear: it is *not* running the SWF file — its parsing it, converting it using Javascript and outputting SVG. Running that same SWF file on a native Flash Player, even on a smartphone would be a fraction of that in terms of CPU usage.
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That’s still pretty cool. Tabias used an existing language to do this. (You should read Peter’s posting for more info.)

Tabias has stated that he is working on another release to get FP 2 targeted swfs to run through Gordon. If Adobe isn’t careful Mr. Schnieder may render all their hard work of tricking iPhone to play swfs almost completely wasted. Maybe they should just hire him.

Tags: Flash, Flash Player, iPhone