As Flash Player is leaving browsers, how could we keep a Flex site accessible?

Question

In the not-too-distant future, the Flash Player will not be enabled in modern browsers by default any more (and will probably be removed completely one day). We have an Apache Flex site that we cannot re-implement in HTML/JS due to its complexity.

We could however have users download a small desktop (Win/Mac) application that would load/ display the remote Flex swfs. How could this be done? It seems that AIR is a natural choice for such a local "wrapper" app, but it seems to be not possible to execute a remote Flex application using SWFLoader due to security issues. Is this correct?

I would basically want to replace such a local air app completely with the remote content (no need for a "subapplication"). Is there any other way to access a remote Flex site from a local Win/Mac (or even IOS/ Android) application and have that application display the Flex site just as today's browsers do?

Answer 1

Should a browser disable the flashplayer, you should already provide a page with instructions on how to turn it on again. Flashbuilder provides the basic HTML page with tests to make sure that the page is capable of displaying flash already. If they (users) are not willing or able to do that, then getting them to install a desktop app is equally if not more unlikely.

In saying that there are ways that you can bundle your app in its own browser. I've not looked in details at this, but I'm guessing that as it will be you app/browser, then you will control all plugins etc.

So look at Chromium or Electron which is based on Chromium.