Swiffy Pros & Cons
Tuesday, 10. July 2012
I have used Swiffy for 6 months in order to convert flash animation to HTML5. From my experience, I summarized pros and cons.
Pros
- Support AS2 grammar partially. Why not AS3? It seemed very limited at the first time but we find it enough to make something nice. We can call JavaScript function from ActionScript code and JavaScript can send parameters to ActionScript (ActionScript code is translated into JavaScript code). There is no way to call ActionScript function from JavaScript, so we need some trick for it.
- Can display most Flash assets. If the tool can’t, it reports that it is not supported so we make Flash assets which are supported.
- It is an active project. It is usually released once a month with bug fixes and enhancements.
Cons
- Slow. It is not only Swiffy problem. HTML5 renderering is slow on some old browsers.
- No communication channel with developers. There is the only feedback form which is not responded.
- No command line tool
- Can’t select runtime version. We have to use only the latest version.
- Not run on Android 2.3 and below. It is because its default browser doesn’t support SVG. Firefox/Opera browser is OK.

