It’s a sore point. Apple refuses to support Adobe’s widely used Flash format on its iOS devices, which means many websites don’t work properly on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Mindful of this fact, Adobe is developing a tool that it hopes will enable developers to quickly and easily convert Flash-based content into HTML5-compliant pages, which will render properly on Apple’s popular mobile range as well as Webkit-based browsers. At present only two browsers are Webkit-based: Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari.
The very first preview has now been released for public consumption – it’s very much a developer’s tool, despite its rather simplistic nature: select your SWF file, click Convert and wait. There’s a Preferences button, but all this does is allow you to view the result in your chosen browser, plus enable logging for troubleshooting purposes.
Not all Flash features are currently supported – even at this early stage in its development, Wallaby can handle a number of elements, including FrameSets, images, layers (partial support) and fills. Unsupported elements include filters, sound and embedded or external video.
The program is obviously still in a very early stage of development, so isn’t recommended for casual or less experienced users.
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