My organization has been using Storyline for years, so we have many older courses built in Storyline versions 1 and 2. We have been having more and more users report Flash-related issues with our older courses. I was wondering what will happen to these courses in 2020 when Flash goes away? Do we need to update them to 360 and publish as HTML 5 only, or is there an easier way? We'd obviously prefer to avoid all of the rework with converting the courses to 360.
It sounds like your organization isn't locked down on browser versions, based on your users reporting Flash-related issues, so I believe it's safe to say that yes, you should probably start working on a plan to update.
It's a great opportunity on many fronts, plus you still have a considerable amount of runway between now and 2020:
It's an opportunity to weed out old courses that are well past their expiration dates.
Courses that are still relevant can be refreshed (visually) and updated to whatever your current branding standards are.
Updating your courses will allow you to utilize newer features such as modern text and the modern player, increasing the range of devices your courses can be reliably accessed from.
Thanks for the follow-up. So the majority of the training my organization develops is for external customers. We recommend browsers for viewing training, but we obviously cannot control what browser they use. My organization also creates some internal training, but our supported browser is IE - which I hate, because it gives us so many problems.
Based on the above, do you still have the same recommendation? I ask specifically for our internal training since we have to use IE. It was my understanding that IE still uses some Flash elements, so if we publishing our training to HTML 5 only, would it still work properly using IE?
In an ideal world, you'd republish to HTML5 with Flash as a fallback in the newer version of Storyline 360. That means you've upgraded your HTML5 support and still have Flash as a fallback where it makes sense for older browsers.
I also like to show people html5test.com to help them see that not all browsers are created equal and how they support HTML5 content may differ. It helps in the conversation with them and setting expectations.
Thank you! That makes sense to publish as HTML5 with flash fallback. But I'm wondering once flash goes away in 2020, would we have to republish again as HTML5 only? Thanks for your guidance with that website - I'll definitely try that to test HTML5 and different browsers.
That makes sense to publish as HTML5 with flash fallback.
This is exactly what we're doing as well, for everything that we're creating new. Even without republishing old content (for our internal courses) we figure that by the time Flash bites the bullet we'll have the majority of our content published as HTML5 with flash fallback at that point, just by attrition of older courses/content. Most of our courses have limited shelf-life.
If you've published for HTML5 with flash fallback there's no reason you'll need to republish again once Flash is gone. The HTML5 is part of your published output and the flash stuff just won't get used.
5 Replies
It sounds like your organization isn't locked down on browser versions, based on your users reporting Flash-related issues, so I believe it's safe to say that yes, you should probably start working on a plan to update.
It's a great opportunity on many fronts, plus you still have a considerable amount of runway between now and 2020:
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the follow-up. So the majority of the training my organization develops is for external customers. We recommend browsers for viewing training, but we obviously cannot control what browser they use. My organization also creates some internal training, but our supported browser is IE - which I hate, because it gives us so many problems.
Based on the above, do you still have the same recommendation? I ask specifically for our internal training since we have to use IE. It was my understanding that IE still uses some Flash elements, so if we publishing our training to HTML 5 only, would it still work properly using IE?
Thanks,
Cassandra
In an ideal world, you'd republish to HTML5 with Flash as a fallback in the newer version of Storyline 360. That means you've upgraded your HTML5 support and still have Flash as a fallback where it makes sense for older browsers.
I also like to show people html5test.com to help them see that not all browsers are created equal and how they support HTML5 content may differ. It helps in the conversation with them and setting expectations.
Hi Tom,
Thank you! That makes sense to publish as HTML5 with flash fallback. But I'm wondering once flash goes away in 2020, would we have to republish again as HTML5 only? Thanks for your guidance with that website - I'll definitely try that to test HTML5 and different browsers.
Thanks,
Cassandra
This is exactly what we're doing as well, for everything that we're creating new. Even without republishing old content (for our internal courses) we figure that by the time Flash bites the bullet we'll have the majority of our content published as HTML5 with flash fallback at that point, just by attrition of older courses/content. Most of our courses have limited shelf-life.
If you've published for HTML5 with flash fallback there's no reason you'll need to republish again once Flash is gone. The HTML5 is part of your published output and the flash stuff just won't get used.
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