Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.
My questions are:
How it will impact Articulate software and its capabilities?
What are the recommended steps for legacy content (flash-based)?
Thanks for sharing that article and reaching out to us here on E-Learning Heroes!
We've known that Flash has been on its way out for some time, so we've been working hard to make sure we're ready by building tools that'll fit your needs today and in the future.
That's one of the reasons we shifted to the subscription model with Articulate 360. Now fixes, updates and new features are released on a regular, more frequent schedule.
We've invested heavily in HTML5 and you'll find that Storyline 3 and Articulate 360 have the HTML5 first or HTML5 only publishing options. You can read a bit more about our shift towards HTML5 here.
For your existing courses there are a couple options (more info here):
If you included HTML5 as a part of the published output, you can point to that directly over the Flash version and make sure your users are viewing the course in a supported HTML5 browser.
You could look at updating the courses to Storyline or Studio 360 and publish for HTML5 only.
Three years is still a ways away, and a lot can happen in that time! Don't worry, we'll keep you all posted with more information, updates and any specifics related to Articulate and HTML5 as they become available.
I hope that answers your questions. If not, let me know! :)
Hi Stephanie! Storyline 2 will always have Flash, but you can choose to include HTML5 as well. To make sure learners never see the flash version you can point specifically to the story_html5.html file.
We have been deep into Flash conversions also and originally thought that we could do a "conversion" to html5/Articulate but our experience is now different. If you only have the .swf version for your courses, then your first step is to reverse engineer it to gain the .fla files. Once you are at this stage, you need to go back into Flash and start to export all of the file assets, e.g., text, graphics, narration, images etc and placed them into a structured file/folder structure that matches your course. Ex: chapter 1 in the course will have a file system that might look like ch01sc01.txt, ch01sc01.wav, etc. (chapter1, screen 1). From there you can start to lay out your new course and import your file/folder content for each screen. Anything within the Flash interaction must be redeveloped within Storyline/html5 - there is no "conversion". The reality is that you also have an opportunity to do some redesigning and rethinking of your new course since your original Flash course is probably a few years old by now. This process of rebuilding the course will take about 3 weeks or so. If anyone has a better approach, please tell me since this is an ongoing effort and any more effective means would be appreciated. PS - if you have the original storyboard for the Flash course, you can at least copy/paste from that doc into Storyline.
Great news for you today - Storyline 3 is officially Flash-free! You'll now see an HTML5 preview in the player properties windows. It no longer relies on Flash. And that means Storyline 3 is officially Flash-free. You can still publish Flash output, but the Flash Player isn’t required to use Storyline 3. Learn more.
Hi, I work for a company that has some old content from Storyline1 and Articulate Studio '13 from few years ago, maybe 10 or less. As we don't have the sources to make the conversion, are they still be able to be see it in à browser another than Chrome? (Our courses run in Succes Factor LMS)
Yes, that is great news! Thanks to Articulate to making the changes, and including us SL3 clients.
I have been publishing all of our StoryLine output in HTML5 only for over a year now. I assume that there is no need to republish all of these courses with this latest SL3 update?
I just tried to publish a Storyline 360 file (that was originally created with Storyline 2). When I try to publish it as Web or LMS the Properties include: "Formats: Flash with HTML5 fallback and AMP." What does that mean? I was told I could not use Flash.....
9 Replies
Hi Piotr,
Thanks for sharing that article and reaching out to us here on E-Learning Heroes!
We've known that Flash has been on its way out for some time, so we've been working hard to make sure we're ready by building tools that'll fit your needs today and in the future.
That's one of the reasons we shifted to the subscription model with Articulate 360. Now fixes, updates and new features are released on a regular, more frequent schedule.
We've invested heavily in HTML5 and you'll find that Storyline 3 and Articulate 360 have the HTML5 first or HTML5 only publishing options. You can read a bit more about our shift towards HTML5 here.
For your existing courses there are a couple options (more info here):
Three years is still a ways away, and a lot can happen in that time! Don't worry, we'll keep you all posted with more information, updates and any specifics related to Articulate and HTML5 as they become available.
I hope that answers your questions. If not, let me know! :)
What about the Storyline 2 output? Is that flash by default or HTML5?
Hi Stephanie! Storyline 2 will always have Flash, but you can choose to include HTML5 as well. To make sure learners never see the flash version you can point specifically to the story_html5.html file.
We have been deep into Flash conversions also and originally thought that we could do a "conversion" to html5/Articulate but our experience is now different. If you only have the .swf version for your courses, then your first step is to reverse engineer it to gain the .fla files. Once you are at this stage, you need to go back into Flash and start to export all of the file assets, e.g., text, graphics, narration, images etc and placed them into a structured file/folder structure that matches your course. Ex: chapter 1 in the course will have a file system that might look like ch01sc01.txt, ch01sc01.wav, etc. (chapter1, screen 1). From there you can start to lay out your new course and import your file/folder content for each screen. Anything within the Flash interaction must be redeveloped within Storyline/html5 - there is no "conversion". The reality is that you also have an opportunity to do some redesigning and rethinking of your new course since your original Flash course is probably a few years old by now. This process of rebuilding the course will take about 3 weeks or so. If anyone has a better approach, please tell me since this is an ongoing effort and any more effective means would be appreciated. PS - if you have the original storyboard for the Flash course, you can at least copy/paste from that doc into Storyline.
Hi David,
Great news for you today - Storyline 3 is officially Flash-free! You'll now see an HTML5 preview in the player properties windows. It no longer relies on Flash. And that means Storyline 3 is officially Flash-free. You can still publish Flash output, but the Flash Player isn’t required to use Storyline 3. Learn more.
The same is true for Storyline 360 as of Update 32, and you can read more about it here.
Hi, I work for a company that has some old content from Storyline1 and Articulate Studio '13 from few years ago, maybe 10 or less. As we don't have the sources to make the conversion, are they still be able to be see it in à browser another than Chrome? (Our courses run in Succes Factor LMS)
Eventually all browsers will stop playing Flash, not just Chrome.
So you need to recreate your Flash courses in another development tool as HTML5.
Hi Ashley,
Yes, that is great news! Thanks to Articulate to making the changes, and including us SL3 clients.
I have been publishing all of our StoryLine output in HTML5 only for over a year now. I assume that there is no need to republish all of these courses with this latest SL3 update?
Russ
I just tried to publish a Storyline 360 file (that was originally created with Storyline 2). When I try to publish it as Web or LMS the Properties include: "Formats: Flash with HTML5 fallback and AMP." What does that mean? I was told I could not use Flash.....
Thanks for any insight.
Debbie
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