Flash Browser? Flash Server Side?

Question

Hello all,

I have two noobish questions about Flash, Actionscript, Flex etc.

1) With these technologies is it possible to create a simple web browser that can render websites?

2) Is it possible to run these technologies on the server side? I am guessing no as Flash requires a browser to run within?

Thanks all for any help

Answer 1

HTML in Flash

Technically you can write an HTML rendering engine in Flash. DENG is an old project that did exactly this. I don't think it's still be updated though.

http://osflash.org/deng

Adobe AIR supports rendering HTML in the embedded WebKit based engine within Flash.

Flash on server

The standalone Flash Player can be used on the server and is often used for unit testing within a continuous integration environment. When run from a background service I don't think it will actually display a UI, but it will run.

Answer 2

Take a look on this article http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flash/articles/air_browser_sample_application.html - it describes how to build your browser with Flash/Air (running on the desktop)