Do I Need To Convert My Flash Courses To HTML5?

Read Time: 3 minutes

The question isn’t so much if you need to do it, but how quickly you can. If you’re still educating learners with Flash courses, they may not even be able to see them, let alone learn from them.

For many years, instructional designers used Adobe Flash to create learning content. Flash enabled designers to enhance text-heavy eLearning with graphical elements, video, and early gamification.

This article will review what happened to Flash, explain what its decline means for L&D, and provide you with steps for what to do next. 

What Happened To Flash?

Flash started a slow decline beginning in 2005. So slow, in fact, that we’re still bidding it farewell more than a decade later.

In 2005, when Apple created the first iPhone, Apple’s developers realized that supporting Flash required excessive battery power, which didn’t make sense for mobile devices. The tech company stopped supporting Flash and began looking for a new solution. YouTube followed close behind and switched to HTML5, the web language that most developers use today.

Later, Google announced that it would eventually block Adobe Flash content on Chrome because it was quickly becoming unusable by most browsers. Last year, Google eliminated Flash and made HTML5 the default way to display website content.

Unless learners manually enable Flash on a site-by-site basis, Flash content is blocked.

What Does Flash’s Decline Mean For Learning And Development?

Many learners don’t realize that they need to enable Flash for every site or course. Content that used to start automatically will now remain paused or hidden until a learner finds the right button to enable it.

Learners are also unable to view flash courses on mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. As mobile learning becomes more popular, so does HTML5. HTML5 comes with several benefits, including:

• Works seamlessly across multiple devices
• Responds to different screen sizes
• Offers better security for your learners
• Runs faster

With these benefits, HTML5 has become the industry standard for mobile eLearning. To make your learning courses modern and accessible, you’ll need to convert them to HTML5.

What If I Have A Library Of Flash Courses? 

If you’ve designed past courses in an authoring tool that has the ability to publish in both Flash and HTML5, in most cases, you can simply use that tool to republish them in HTML5.

If you find, however, that your legacy courses were designed and published with Flash, or an authoring tool that didn’t output HTML5, you’ll need to migrate those courses from Flash to HTML5.

The migration process can take thousands of hours of time and requires expertise in both platforms. Many organizations with smaller L&D teams simply can’t handle this level of conversion in-house.

Roundtable Learning is currently working with many organizations to handle this process, which frees up L&D teams to focus on new strategy and content.

Convert Flash Courses To HTML5 With Expert Help

Our in-house staff can dedicate the time and expertise required to convert Flash courses and even modernize the design and content as needed. We also publish our courses in HTML5, so they’re automatically ready for learners on any platform.

Are you able to republish your Flash courses? If you’re unsure, we can help you determine the right process. If you’re concerned that your learners can’t access old courses, or you’re worried that all of your Flash courses will become obsolete, book a meeting with our expert team.