Ruffle (software)

Ruffle is an open source media player for playing SWF files. Its developers describe it as a "Flash Player emulator". It is written in Rust, for desktop and web.

Ruffle
Ruffle logo
Developer(s)Mike Welsh, kmeisthax, Nathan "Dinnerbone" Adams, Callum Thomson
Repository
Written inRust
TypeMultimedia
LicenseMIT license, Apache License 2.0
Websiteruffle.rs 

Background

Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, Adobe Flash was a major multimedia creation platform, used for making videos, games and various interactive applications.[1]

With the advent of HTML5, a HTML iteration which allowed for much more flexible multimedia management, Flash began a slow decline.[2] In 2015, Adobe began openly advocating for HTML5, citing that it was a mature open standard.[1] Over the coming years, Flash would continue to decline in popularity.[2] In 2017, Adobe would go on to announcing their plans to retire Flash by 2020.[3]

While the creation of new Flash content might be out of the question, the ability to run old SWF files has been a major digital preservation concern.[4]

In 2016, Google Labs discontinued their Flash migration platform Swiffy.[5]

History

In 2016, Mike Welsh would begin a pet project called Fluster.[6] Later renamed Ruffle, this project would morph into a Flash Player emulator written in Rust, with a desktop and web client.[7]

Ruffle is currently under open source development on GitHub.[8]

Websites using Ruffle

Between 2019 and 2020, some websites announced they would be using Ruffle. Newgrounds announced that all flash content will use Ruffle and that all Flash embed code will be replaced with Ruffle equivalents.[9] In June 2020, Coolmath Games announced that all its Flash games will now use Ruffle.[10] In November 2020, Internet Archive announced they will be using Ruffle to preserve Flash games and animations.[11] In December 2020, Armor games announced that Ruffle had been chosen as the player for Flash content, and Homestar Runner announced the implementation of Ruffle for their cartoons and games.[12]

In February 2021, FurAffinity announced that Ruffle will be used for all flash content.[13]

Features

Ruffle is available natively in Rust, as a desktop client and as a web client.

Currently, Ruffle supports older Flash content which uses ActionScript 1/2.0 with ActionScript 3.0 support upcoming.[14][15]

See also

References
  1. "Flash, HTML5 and Open Web Standards". Adobe Blog. 2015-12-01. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  2. "Usage Statistics of Flash as Client-side Programming Language on Websites, January 2021". w3techs.com. Retrieved 2021-01-06.
  3. "Flash & The Future of Interactive Content". Adobe Blog. 2017-07-25. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  4. Fiadotau, Mikhail (Jan 6, 2021). "Growing old on Newgrounds: The hopes and quandaries of Flash game preservation". First Monday. Volume 25, Number 8 - 3 August 2020.
  5. "Bannière Flash en HTML5 : Google arrête Swiffy". Génération-NT (in French). Retrieved 2021-02-07.
  6. "Initial commit · ruffle-rs/ruffle@b979ac2". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  7. "Update README · ruffle-rs/ruffle@0d9d5fe". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  8. ruffle-rs/ruffle, Ruffle, 2020-07-24, retrieved 2020-07-24
  9. "Flash Emulation & Brave BAT". Newgrounds.com. Retrieved 2021-02-07.
  10. "Coolmath Games and Flash". www.coolmathgames.com. Archived from the original on 23 February 2020. Retrieved 2021-02-07.
  11. Jason Scott (November 19, 2020). "Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive". Retrieved January 16, 2021.
  12. "The Future of Flash on Armor Games". Armor Games. 8 December 2020. Retrieved 2021-01-06.
  13. "Help page -- Fur Affinity [dot] net". www.furaffinity.net. Retrieved 2021-02-07.
  14. "ruffle-rs/ruffle". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  15. "Ruffle". Ruffle. Retrieved 2021-01-13.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.