What is the future of flash v html5

[Jenni Culverwell]

Has anyone seen the article by Clive Shepherd  "Reaching your audience - new ways to distribute content in December's issue  Inside Learning Technologies & Skills. 

It talks about the next generation html "...eventually leading to the demise of Flash".   Later the article says "The future of flash is currently in question, largely because of Apple's refusal to allow flash on its iPhones and iPads" and that because the future is looking increasingly mobile, "many elearning authoring tool vendors are looking more closely at html5." 

I wondered if anyone has any further insight thoughts or views on this, and what it might mean, especially for non-tech non-flash trained developers thinking of developing further skills?

Happy new year to LSG forum members.

[Gareth Wellings]

Hi Jenni - glad you posted on this, it's a topic I've been looking into a little recently (from a 'non-techie, non-flash trained' perspective too), because we're looking in the possibilities and challenges of developing mobile content in our organisation and it's increasing looking like a minefield.  On the Flash vs HTML 5 issue what I've been able to determine is:

• Apple have been completely opposed to allowing flash on their mobile devices, for some pretty fundamental reasons including Flash is a battery hog, it doesn't support touch technology, there are security concerns about Flash, it's not an open development platform etc - Steve Jobs wrote an open letter before his untimely demise on this which is not too techie and worth a read.
• Adobe have already admitted defeat in the mobile marketplace for Flash - announcing that the most recent version of their Flash Player plug in for mobile devices will be the last.

What is not clear to me  is what this all means for learning content developers - there again seem to be a variety of views out there, but the common themes I've picked up are:

• There is a huge amount of Flash based content out there on the web, of which learning content is just a piece - and there are huge numbers of people accessing that content using PCs.  Flash for the PC therefore isn't going to disappear anytime soon.
• However if you're developing content with the intention to deliver it across a variety of platforms including mobile (which is no small task and fraught with complexities in play at the moment), then you're likely to want to steer clear of Flash and look at HTML 5.
• Adobe clearly already recognise HTML 5 is critical to future content development, and on their Captivate blog recently I saw news that they are working on tools to enable the conversion of Flash content to HTML - I suspect this is just the beginning, and will be well worth watching that space.
• Also I  would expect that any rapid content development tool that is worth having will soon have the ability to publish HTML 5 content, if it doesn't already offer that capability.   

There's lots of very good comment on this topic out there on the web too, well worth a Google!  Will be very interested in hearing what others have discovered on this topic too.

Happy New Year everyone!

[Claire Warburton]

Thanks Gareth your posting was very useful  - we are developing a load of captivate content but are worried that the constituency of one of our userbases includes a growing proportion of i-pad users....... although most also have PCs it is their i-pad which accompanies them everywhere! Does anyone know of an e.learning authoring tool that doesn't use Flash? sorry if I'm asking a naive question

 

[Stephen Brown]

Hi there, below is a link to an episode of 'elearning TV' which pretty much sums up the current situation. Both Adobe and Articulate are adding the capability to publish to HTML5. Articulate's new product 'Storyline' is in beta testing now.

e-learning tv on HTML5.

The main issue as the vid explains is that HTML5 isn't yet compatible with the latest version of Internet Explorer, meaning most corporates couldn't publish exclusively in HTML just yet.

Hopefully this helps.