Convert SWF files to HTML5 with Swiffy

Some Google projects really do start from one person hacking around. Last summer, an engineering intern named Pieter Senster joined the mobile advertising team to explore how we could display Flash animations on devices that don’t support Adobe Flash player. Pieter made such great progress that Google hired him full time and formed a team to work on the project. Swiffy was born!

Today we’re making the first version of Swiffy available on Google Labs. You can upload a SWF file, and Swiffy will produce an HTML5 version which will run in modern browsers with a high level of SVG support such as Chrome and Safari. It’s still an early version, so it won’t convert all Flash content, but it already works well on ads and animations. We have some examples of converted SWF files if you want to see it in action.
 


 
Swiffy uses a compact JSON representation of the animation, which is rendered using SVG and a bit of HTML5 and CSS3. ActionScript 2.0 is also present in the JSON object, and is interpreted in JavaScript in the browser. This representation makes the Swiffy animations almost as compact as the original SWF files.

Swiffy is a great example of how far the web platform has come. Swiffy animations benefit from the recent advancements in JavaScript execution speed and hardware accelerated 2D graphics in the browser.

The Snippets Gone From Google Results

Sometime over this past weekend Google stopped showing any review snippet with either Blended or the Branded One Box Results in the main search results view for many results. It appears that snippets are still visible in restaurants, hotels and possibly other heavily reviewed areas

New view (from 6/27):
 

 


 
View from last week (taken 6/23)
 

Review snippets have also been removed from most typical blended results (again with the exception of restaurants/hotels). This change seems consistent with the recent change to remove the images from the Blended results that occurred earlier in the month and effectively moves more information above the fold. Review snippets were first seen in the Google Blended results tests that ran last summer and were a regular part of the results since the Blended results were formally released in late October of last year. For me, they were a salient feature that dramatically changed the role of reviews in reputation management bringing a “typical review” front and center for all to see. The review snippets were derived via algo and were intended to provide a representative flavor of the review corpus. As in my example above, the snippets were not always accurate.  While I don’t think that was a reason in their demise, I am sure some businesses will be grateful they are gone.

600 Free Google Map Markers

Map Icons Collection



 


 
I rarely make a Google Map without using map markers from the Map Icons Collection. The collection has more than 600 free icons which you can use as map markers with the Google Maps API, which means you can nearly always find a marker that fits the purpose and design of your map.

The collection has previously been hosted on Google Projects but now has its very own website. With the new website comes two cool new features, styles and custom colors.

The custom colors feature allows you to change the color of any map marker to fit the style of your map and website. The style feature lets you choose from seven different style of marker, including iPhone, gradient and classic.

If you are a Google Maps API developer then bookmark this collection now!