The only thing missing from the iPhone is Adobe’s Flash Player. Since Apple has taken so long to approve Flash on the iPhone, a clever programmer by the name of Tobias Schneider has managed to get the iPhone to run interactive apps created using Adobe’s Flash platform. This way of running said apps aren’t subject to Apple’s strict rules of the AppStore because it runs under the built-in web browser: Safari.

It’s called Gordon, and the software doesn’t allow Adobe’s Flash itself to work on the iPhone. Gordon is a JavaScript runtime that allows the browser to run and display .swf (Shockware Flash) files. You go to a website, the JavaScript code loads and does its thing — you’re now flash-enabled.

You may be asking yourself, does this mean my iPhone supports Adobe’s Flash? Well, no — it doesn’t. You cannot just go to any flash-based website and expect it to work. The website has to have Gordon installed. The webmaster would have to add this runtime to every instance of Flash, which is only a few lines of code.

While the project is open source and available to the public, it doesn’t solve one of the biggest problems with Flash — Flash hogs the CPU like a fat kid does cookies!

However, this clever Javascript hack potentially opens the door to a new class of interactive, animated mobile websites. While many web developers rely on Flash to accomplish things that can’t easily be done in HTML; those Flash apps won’t run on the iPhone.

If you want to see Gordon in action head over to Paul Irish’s demos by clicking here — prepare yourself to be amazed. The demos work on both MobileSafari or on any desktop web browser. The animations seem to run very smoothly on the iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.1.2.

- source:
Gordon Flash Javascript hack Demos
Gordon Flash Javascript hack source code