Still haven’t converted legacy Flash content? Here are the top five reasons to convert those files right away.

In words of G.K.Chesterton “, The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.” In this first blog of our Modernization series, we discuss compelling reasons to convert legacy Flash content as soon as possible.

This is what the Adobe website shows at present:

“Since Adobe no longer supports Flash Player after 31 December 2020 and blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning 12 January 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems.”

It’s almost a decade since Steve Jobs in his open letter outlined reasons why Flash would not be allowed on Apple products. Undoubtedly, this might have triggered a steep descent for Flash. At the same time, we saw the sudden rise of HTML5, which became popular as it is easily customizable, browser friendly, and supports multimedia integrations.

While most organisations have already migrated Flash courses to HTML, there are still some who could not do, so mainly due to budget constraints or other pressing priorities. However, with every passing moment, it is becoming inevitable that both quality training and competitive advantage are at stake.

Here are five top reasons to convert Flash courses:

1. Security

There have been security concerns with Flash for many years now, making it vulnerable to cyber-attacks, hacking, and malwares. Because Flash has reached End-of-Life (EOL), no new security patches or updates will be available. There’s no surprise why browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla, and Safari have stopped supporting Flash content.

2. Suitable content for modern-day learners

With attention spans shrinking to just few seconds, a modern-day learner relies heavily on mobiles and tablets to learn, bite-sized yet meaningful content. Unfortunately , Flash-based courses won’t run on mobile devices. Now, imagine you have a library of Flash courses that you would like the modern-day learner to complete. It simply won’t work, and more importantly, the whole purpose of delivering quality training would be lost. HTML5 has emerged as highly preferred technology that helps to view courses on all devices and across all browsers. 

3. Alignment with strategic business goals

In the post-pandemic world, online training has gained attention like never before. Most organizations have started to budget/invest in quality online training to suit modern-day learners’ needs. From an organisation’s perspective, the strategic business goal would be to improve the bottom line by expecting employees to perform at their absolute best.  Needless to say, to achieve this goal, employees need to get access to the latest and greatest learning content. There is absolutely no room for legacy Flash content, as it would simply not align with strategic business goals. 

4. Browser support

Since Adobe is no longer supporting Flash, they are blocking and disabling all Flash content from web browsers, including Chrome, beginning January 12, 2021. Now, what does this mean for employees who try accessing Flash-based content? It could be very frustrating, right? On the other hand, HTML is much more flexible and works across all browsers. Additionally, HTML5 is SEO friendly and does not need any plug-ins, unlike Flash.

5. Future-proof

As Flash was a proprietary tool, it was very cumbersome to make new updates ; hence, it became difficult to match the pace of changing technologies. Since organisations invest heavily in developing e-Learning courses, they would prefer to select a technology that is self-updating, keeps up with new learning technologies, and most importantly is Future-proof. These factors would eliminate the need ot re-invent the wheel and migrate to new technology each time.

To summarize, these five reasons should encourage you to convert any remaining legacy Flash content . For organisations, it could be a great opportunity to provide best-in-class learning content to employees. And for catalog companies, it could be a new revenue stream altogether.