Adobe Shows Off Flash-to-HTML5 Converter

Adobe's John Nack points to a demo of a new tool from the company that would allow developers to easily convert their Flash projects to a combination of HTML5 and related non-Flash technologies. The tool, demoed at Adobe's MAX 2010 conference earlier this week, is not yet promised for a public release, but it is clear that the company is looking at ways to help developers offer their content in multiple formats.

Are you surprised? Don't be. As I've written many times, Adobe lives or dies by its ability to help customers solve real problems. That means putting pragmatism ahead of ideology.

Flash is great for a lot of things, and this week's demos showed it's only improving. It's not the only game in town, however, and Adobe makes its money selling tools, not giving away players. Let's help people target whatever media they need, as efficiently as possible.

Apple has of course been pushing HTML5 and other standards as an alternative to Adobe's Flash technology, and developers are increasingly getting on board as they seek to keep their content compatible with Apple's popular Flash-less iOS devices. One recent study concluded that more than half of the H.264-encoded video on the Internet is now available in HTML5 format, but with Flash used in many other capacities besides video presentation, Adobe's new tools could help developers of some of these other implementations more easily move their content to HTML5.