We all know how amazing flash is, it is possibly the nicest looking type of website out there. However there are a few problems with having flash on your site. The first is that it is invisible to Google, the second is that they can take a long time to load and finally they cannot be used on mobiles.

Google has released a tool called Swiffy, which may be because it requires a SWF file to convert. Swiffy takes the SWF file you have uploaded and then the tool converts the file. It shows you the coding and the flash file next to each other so you can compare the two.

At the bottom of the page there is a link which sends you to your uploaded flash file in HTML, all you then have to do is view the source code and copy the script, your code is now ready to upload to any site you want.

I have already tested the HTML 5 conversions on a mobile device (iPhone 3 GS) and they do work, even the games that Google provide, I have also uploaded my own flash files. Flash games do work when converted but the more complex the game is, then the laggier the html version is for mobile devices. This may not be the case for phones such as the iPhone 4s, but unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to test this. Converted flash animations are quite fast and are only a little slower than what is displayed on a PC.

All in all, Swiffy is going to be of great use to all web design and animators, now their work will be easily displayed on not only computers but also mobile devices. It is only a matter of time before Swiffy becomes more popular and all flash files become converted into HTML for speed, SEO reasons and across the board usability.