Knowledge blog

As per Adobe’s official announcement the Flash player plugin will stop support by 2020. Google, Microsoft and popular browsers have announced that they will disable the plug-in by default in their browsers by early 2020. Thus it is very clear that Flash Will Be Obsolete by the End of 2020. However it is all about PCs but devices have no support to Flash player already.

Official Statement From Adobe

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.”

Steve Jobs actually predicted this would happen soon. He did not think it was a good idea to move forward with Adobe Flash because he believed that Flash Player was created for the PC era, but when it comes to mobile devices, Flash it not a definite choice. The main reason is Flash player kills the battery life hence it is not worth for Smart devices. So he thought the use of Flash Player would limit the iOS experience. He also stated that Flash Player caused crashes with MAC’s. Thus he started focusing on the HTML, CSS and Javascript based content.

The Flash developers and users know the power of Flash, a wow tool that helps create and experience the multi-media content in an awesome way. There was nothing unbeatable when Flash was dominating during PC era especially for interactive eLearning, game and multimedia content to the web. Flash can present anything visually, interactively and effectively. Hence it is very sad to lose the power of Flash.

What should you do if you have content like online courses, apps, games, interactive designer tools and other interactive assets built in or published in Flash? As of 2020, any flash content (either built in or published as Flash) may no longer work. As 2020 is getting closer there is no choice of waiting, it’s important to start planning at least now.

First, and foremost, formulate an action plan. Evaluate content which contains flash units and determine whether if it’s time to:

In some cases, a course or other asset may have to be re-designed or revamped altogether, or you may be able to be leverage a portion of the content for your redesigned content. It really depends what’s contained in the published content including how many any animations you have, and how many flash units are contained in your published app, course of other content.

Of course, converting the Flash content only applies to developers who have the source files. If you don’t own the source files and have purchased flash content including an app, game, animation or course, for example, you may have to replace your content or program altogether.

Something you’ll want to consider is creating a list of all courses and other assets that you have on-hand to evaluate them to determine what you need to do.

If you have a large number of courses to be converted using the same tool, you may want to create a list of standard settings for all developers to refer to during the conversion process. This will streamline the process or at least make it easier for all the folks who are converting the courses.

If you have source files for your content on-hand, check your existing development tools to see if there are publishing options to publish in HTML5. If available, try publishing as HTML5 and then test thoroughly to determine if the output is successful and works well on multiple devices. If your content does not convert successfully, you may need to revamp portions of your asset, or you may need to replace the entire program. There are more tools like Animate CC, Adobe Edge and other third party tools with which can give a try. It is not sure that all Flash content can be converted using these tools. Especially the interactive content and heavy weight animations will not work mostly using these tools.

The most interactive as well as gaming content fails converting using the automated tools. Especially when you consider mobile performance it is not the choice at all. So think about setting a team of experts or contract with a best Flash to HTML5 Conversion Company. Although it is additional expense it worth of doing. In fact there is no option than converting Flash content to HTML5.