JavaScript Has Won: Run Flash with Mozilla Shumway and Develop Silverlight in JS with Fayde

Well this is some amazing news that has been a long time coming. You can take your Flash apps and run them without Flash, and take your Silverlight apps and (almost) run them without Silverlight.

If you still don't think JavaScript has won the web, please read on.

Shumway - Flash in JavaScript and HTML 5

The Mozilla Project "Shumway" has been a long time coming (as long ago as 2012, but it's now ready to be looked at more deeply).

Chris Peterson, a Program Manager on the Mozilla Shumway says:

"Shumway is in a race to stay relevant as Flash fades from the web, but there will always be a long-tail of Flash content that would/will be lost when Adobe or browsers stop supporting the Flash plugin."

Think about that. We've all largely got "Evergreen Browsers" now that update themselves as often as weekly, but sometimes it feels like Adobe Flash is being attacked daily, so we're told to update that as well. Flash itself has more than fallen from grace, as Chris points out, it's fading from the web itself. Fast forward a year or so when there is no more Flash installed, but there's still Flash on the web. Enter Shumway - it's a renderer for SWF (Flash files) without native code! Shumway literally.

Why is it called Shumway? Again, Chris:

"The name "Shumway" is derived from "Gordon Shumway", the actual name of the TV character ALF: Flash -> Flash Gordon -> Gordon Shumway -> Shumway."

That's awesome. What else is awesome? "Shumway is written in TypeScript. It has an ActionScript interpreter and a JIT that generates JavaScript, compiled using eval()."

So Shumway is an HTML experiment that uses TypeScript (a modern typed JavaScript compiler/transpiler) to read ActionScript and resources and JIT the result into evaluated JavaScript. Fantastic. It's also open source and on GitHub. Even better, the Firefox Nightly is using Shumway for Flash videos on Amazon.com. This is the beginning of their test, I presume, to sunset Flash in Firefox.

Fayde - Silverlight in JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas

At the same time, there's The Fayde project. Also Open Source, Fayde also compiles to JavaScript. But Fayde transforms Silverlight into HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript! It's an implementation of a XAML engine in JS. Here's a near-Silverlight implementation of the classic Todo application, expressed on the web without plugins. Not enough? Here's a complex Fantasy Football app written in a Silverlight-like environment but running in your browser, again, without Silverlight.

To be clear, there are significant architectural differences between these two projects. Shumway reads the binary SWF format and tries to Be Flash, while Fayde is reimagining, if you will, that takes the Silverlight concepts of ViewModels and Views in XAML and adds TypeScript (a comfortable language for the C#-familiar) with the result rendered on a Canvas. It's not a Silverlight Emulator, it's a Silverlight-like implementation and app development pattern for HTML5. It's open source, and they are looking for participation, so head over and get involved! Fayde may be the Silverlight migration strategy you've been looking for.

Aside: From my perspective, it's not unreasonable to imagine taking something like JSIL (listen to my podcast on this amazing project) or a similar IL->JS system and combine it with Fayde to somehow run XAPs as well.

I love how crazy JavaScript is and what people have been able to do with it. Now, go run this PC Emulator (~virtual machine) written by Fabrice Bellard in JavaScript. It's Linux, on a 486, in your browser, in JavaScript. *brain explodes*

Have a lovely day and enjoy today's Open Web.