Flash

Hi Madeline,

We're still using Storyline 2 and we rely on Flash (mainly because we have many Flash animations in our courses).

The problems we currently have is Flash is disabled by default on many browsers so we have to guide our clients to activate it for our LMS.

Thanks Pierre!
Thanks for your response! Flash is slowly going away. What are your plans when it's no longer there? 

Hi Madeline,

All of our courses are made with SL2, which has an HTML5 output we find unreliable (especially with quizzes). So as long as Flash is supported by browsers, we help our clients to activate Flash on their end.

We may switch to SL3 (or SL360) later to get a better HTML5 output but they're a bit pricey (especially SL360) regarding the features we would really need.

Now, there's also the problem of Flash animations inserted in our SL courses. We'll have to convert them to video (so we'll go from crisp & light vector animations to heavy and blurry videos but, hey, swf has to dye so...). The best tool I found so far is Swivel (swf to video).

But there's still the problem of some interactive SWFs (mini games or interactive animations) we inserted. And I really don't know what we could do.

Hi Pierre!

Thanks so much. I'm not sure if you have this answer or if one of the Storyline people may, but can you confirm or point me in the direction of something that explains the HTML output differences in SL 360 vs SL2? We're very close to possibly upgrading to solve some of the problems we have. I downloaded the free trial of 360 and I was able to republish a few courses and they work on our LMS now. I just wondered if there was something somewhere explaining what the difference is in the publish settings?

https://articulate.com/360/storyline#compare

Well, they say "Superior HTML5 Output", which is nice for SL2 owners...

Hi there Madeline!

Pierre is spot on with his recommendations (thanks, Pierre!), but I wanted to chime in with a few suggestions as well. 

First, you can compare the features that are supported in HTML5 and Flash in Storyline 2 and Storyline 360 in these charts:

• Storyline 2
• Storyline 360

Next, Storyline 360 HTML5 output is supported in a wider range of web browsers than Storyline 2 HTML5 output.

Finally, check out what we're doing to prepare for the end of Flash. That discussion has lots of valuable information in the comments area, so be sure to browse that section, too! 

Hi Alyssa, we currently use 360 and storyline 3. We have courses though that contain flash that were created in Storyline 1 and Storyline 2 that we want to republish as HTML 5 only. I tried to re-publish 1 course built in Storyline 1, on Storyline 3, however I got an error message that the imported zip does not contain valid content files. In addition the course was missing the navigation buttons. Do you have any suggestions? Will SL 1 and 2 courses function properly if re-published in SL 3 or 360? 

Hello CI and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)

Yes, you should be able to upgrade those courses using Storyline 360 or Storyline 3.

You should be able to open the .story file directly in the software you choose. You may be getting an error due to the zipped file.

We were able to republish all of our courses from Storyline 2 into the html5 only formats in 360. It took over a solid week to convert them. Sure would have been nice if articulate had a batch converter! :)

Hi Cl,

I had the same error at first, and it's exactly what Leslie said. I tried to open the zip file before I realized I just needed the .story file. I hope that works for you!

Isn't there a tool you guys are creating or have created that will run through the LMS and convert old Articulate flash courses to HTML5? I thought I read about this in one of the discussions but I can't seem to relocate it. 

Hi Corrissa,

We have a tool that will allow you to mass update published courses to take advantage of fixes noted here.  It won't upgrade a Storyline course from an earlier version to a newer version (i.e., Storyline 2 -> Storyline 3) nor will it change any of the publish settings. So if you need to update courses to publish for HTML5 only, you'll need to update and republish each course with those settings.