A Flash course — time goes by, and with it...
Dozens of years ago — when we started to create e-learning — we couldn’t imagine working without Flash technology. A bunch of developers was sitting and typing new frameworks, which made it easier for us to transfer what was created in the scriptwriters’ heads to the screen.
The continuously developed tool allowed us to design more and more advanced solutions. Extensive decision paths or advanced interactions and psychotests had no secrets from us. Animated films or cartoon characters as course narrators? That was our bread and butter!
Over the years, e-learning trends have changed — and with them, technologies. Courses for mobile devices have appeared, and it has also become fashionable to reflect real situations in training. In short, there’s no room for princesses!
Courses with many lessons have been replaced with microlearning — from short forms we now create e-learning strategies.
Fall of Flash
Apart from the change of training methodology, the time has come to change the technology as well. It started in 2010, when Steve Jobs announced that Flash would not be supported by Apple devices. In 2011, Disney invested $10 million in a startup developing HTML5 games. In the same year, YouTube started using HTML5 instead of Flash. In 2015, the case of Hacking Team came to light. The company was involved in the development of malicious software used, among others, by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau — exploiting security vulnerabilities in Flash. That’s when Facebook’s head of security, Alex Stamos, came up with the idea to give an end date for support for this technology. In the same year, Mozilla blocked all Flash versions by default. In 2017, Chrome abandoned this technology and was followed by other browsers. The use of Adobe Flash is planned to end in 2020.
Flash courses — what went wrong?
First of all, it’s about a lack of security. Flash technology had many serious vulnerabilities, which exposed users to dangerous attacks and surveillance. Companies were established to search for these vulnerabilities and sell information to governments in different countries. Of course, it’s illegal but it’s an ideal source of surveillance.
In addition, the increased demand for computational power and system resources is problematic. In practice, it increases battery consumption, which shortens the operating time of mobile devices.
Moreover, Flash courses aren’t responsive and don’t support touch functions on mobile devices. Constantly updating plugins was also troublesome for users.
Launching Flash courses already requires manual plugin activation in most environments. From the end of 2020, it’ll require the use of older versions of browsers or programming tools. Otherwise, the training will simply stop working.
HTML5 vs. Flash courses
The safest solution is to rewrite (convert) courses to HTML5. This way you’ll avoid frustrating and probably expensive programming work, which is necessary to run Flash trainings.
What distinguishes HTML5 from Flash technology? First of all:
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- responsiveness and scalability – it enables the support of touch options and the use of training on mobile devices (anywhere and anytime);
- security – all you need to launch a course is a browser! There’s no need to install plugins, which were necessary for Flash courses to work.
Rewriting/converting Flash courses to HTML5
If you have a library of Flash courses in your company and their content is important to you, contact
We’ll prepare a free quote and help you convert your courses from Flash technology to HTML5. By the way, you can refresh them; update the content, remove talking characters, or simply adapt them to current trends!