CIAO Flash: Let's move to HTML5

Long-time back Adobe has already announced to discontinue the FLASH Player by end of 2019 which will lead to no support to FLASH player plugin. Even Microsoft has also made their picture clear to disable the plugin in their web browsers by 2020. So, it’s a question for every organisation what to do with their existing content build in Flash.

In the official statement from Adobe, in July 2017, they stated "In collaboration with several of our technology partners - including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla, Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats."

Before we take you further, I would like to brief you a little about FLASH. Flash is a multimedia software under the umbrella of Adobe. It is used for producing wonderful applications be it Mobile or Desktop, it has been used for animations, videos, mobile games and other web applications. Now the question is why it is discontinuing now?

So, there are a lot of valid reasons associated with its discontinuity which may be as follows:

It was actually created for Desktop era but now we are in the smartphone world, due to the shortfall in this software feature list we are moving for newer technologies for better results. Flash was not fully supported to the full web, shortfall in openness, battery life for smartphones, Touch sensor, poor quality of other development tools, Security, Performance and Reliability. This technology was not very successful on iOS Platforms, it has crashed a lot of time on this platform due to which developers had started to switch to other newer technologies like HTML5, CSS2, CSS3 and JavaScript which were more adaptive to the mobile-based environment. If we see the last few years HTML5 emerged as a most trusted and preferred choice of developers to create E-learning courses, animations, apps and other content which makes them accessible on all devices like Laptop, Desktop, Smartphones and tablets.

Let’s come to the point, what should we do with existing content published in Flash?

It has become a big-time challenge for most of the organisations who have a lot of legacy content as E-learning courses, Videos, Animations, Apps, Marketing materials which are in Flash. Now when Flash is going to be obsolete by the end of 2019. It becomes the demand of this hour to convert Flash-based content into HTML5 and make them accessible for all platform’s types including Smartphones & Tablets. So, when we convert these contents, we always make it mobile-friendly, more responsive so that automatically it can adjust to a different type of resolution. Now when we are at final stages of Flash discontinuity, we should have a strong and proactive approach to convert it from Flash to HTML5 and plan accordingly. It means we should decide:

·      Need to discontinue the course, program, animation

·      Convert the already published content to HTML5 or

·      Rebuild, Redesign the course, program, animation or other content

We need to find that do we have the source files to convert. If not then we need to replace the content or program altogether. In some cases, a course, other assets, pictures have to be redesigned or revamped altogether or we can leverage some part of the content for our redesigned content. It so much depends on the base content which we build in Flash already. Post our decision to the process of treating the content we move to different Rapid authoring tools to convert it.

Major tools to convert content from Flash to HTML5

Now when we decide to convert content from Flash to HTML5 we need to identify which is the best tool for this type of conversion. In the eLearning industry there are lots of Rapid authoring tools with cutting edge conversion technologies and features to do this successfully. It enhances your process and acceleration to convert or transform the Flash-based content to HTML5. These tools help you to redesign, rejuvenate or translate the obsolete content in new look and feel. Major tools are like as follows:

1.   Articulate Storyline

2.  Adobe Captivate

3.  Lectora Inspire Conversion Suite

4.  ADAPT learning

5.  Elucidat

6.  iSpring Conversion Tools

7.  Raptivity

8.  Zenler Studio

9.  dominKnow one

10. Smart builder

The above eLearning authoring tools are most extensively used for HTML5 output. It is important to note that a smooth conversion is only possible if the existing source files can be opened and exported to a new version of a program that supports HTML5 exports. In case of updates via the existing tools are not possible, you would need to create new packages and technical updates for graphical adjustments etc. Above tools will help you to create a device-agnostic content, responsive content and help you in preventing your course content from becoming obsolete.

It’s time to analyse if you have the internal capabilities to do this conversion or connect with us we would be happy to advise you in selecting the right tools or strategy for this content repurposing and in full conversion process.