Flashrendered

Flashrendered is a rendering framework and runtime designed for 2D vector animation and interactive content. It provides a platform-agnostic pipeline that executes vector graphics, text, and simple bitmap assets in real time, with hardware acceleration through WebGL or Canvas backends. The goal is to offer a modern, plugin-free alternative for producing rich web content that preserves the familiar Flash-era animation model while leveraging current web standards.

Origin and scope: The term arose within open-source communities seeking to replace Flash Player with an open, install-free runtime. Flashrendered emphasizes a scene graph, timeline-based animation, and a component-oriented API that mirrors early Flash concepts but is decoupled from any single plugin or vendor.

Technical approach: Content is defined as a hierarchy of display objects, each with vector shapes, fills, strokes, masks, and filters. The renderer translates vector instructions into a GPU-accelerated scene graph, supporting caching of static frames and bitmap-backed textures for performance. Interactivity is exposed through an event-driven model and a JavaScript-like scripting surface.

Content formats and tools: Developers author content in a Flashrendered-compatible editor or convert existing SWF-style assets to a JSON-based scene description. Assets are delivered compressed and can be streamed. The system supports SVG-like vector primitives, text rendering, and filter effects, enabling broad visual fidelity with compact packaging.

Platforms and considerations: Flashrendered runs in modern browsers via a standalone runtime or embedded component and can target desktop and mobile devices. Adoption varies by project, with caveats including porting legacy content, performance tuning for mobile devices, and licensing of third-party modules. See also related technologies such as SVG, Canvas, WebGL, and Flash.