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November 28, 2005
CANVAS in SWF
CANVAS in SWF: I was just reading of a CANVAS example via Manish Jethani, and from doing some web searches found that Paul Colton has recently added a CANVAS example to his JavaScript-controlled generic-SWF AFLAX library. (AFLAX is a way for JavaScript to specify drawing and logic instructions for a SWF, using the externalInterface API of Macromedia Flash Player 8 -- if you develop in SWF you wouldn't need the extra layer, but it's a helpful advance for those more familiar with JavaScript, and can help make the CANVAS tag more browser-independent.) That's cool enough, but then I saw that he also ported Mario Klingemann's Kaleidoscope from ActionScript to JavaScript -- see JavaScript source -- there's a definite performance drop when the browser passes its interactivity into the SWF, but it's very impressive to see that even such an example is possible. This "write in JavaScript to control a SWF" approach is still bending my brain a little, but I think it's a rich area for future work, melding the web technologies together even tighter than before -- check it out!
Posted by John Dowdell at November 28, 2005 12:08 PM
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