The times they are a changin’ – and so are the technologies. Once a go-to application for everything from video ads to games to entire websites, Adobe Flash will no longer be supported in most Internet browsers after the end of this year.

For those of us involved in the eLearning and online training space, this may impact your training program, especially if you have courses that are a few years old. This is because for a long time, online training courses were published in Flash and although HTML5 is a more recent publishing option, some of your courses might still contain elements of Flash (e.g. animations, transitions, effects, and accordion or hover features).

Similarly, your SCORM content may contain some Flash elements. The majority of today’s online training packages are delivered via SCORM, but courses containing Flash (anything with the file extension .swf) could be affected – even if they’re delivered via SCORM.

The short story is that without Flash, parts of your courses may not function fully. Learners will experience gaps for the unavailable content and could miss out on key interactions and information. Worst case scenario is that the course may not load or play at all.

As if you didn’t have enough to worry about this year!

Out with the Old and In with the New, Off-the-Shelf Content

End of year is a great time to assess the relevancy of your content regardless – even without the sunsetting of Flash. Now’s the perfect time to determine what needs to be updated or removed.

So, yes, you may be able to replace the Flash elements in content that you want to keep and republish them in HTML5, which has benefits such as being more lightweight, fast, and requiring less CPU time to render web pages. However, via a shameless promotion, let us remind you that Litmos Training Content will not be affected by Flash retiring. It’s a reliable way to future-proof your learning content because we manage and maintain the compliance, correctness, and quality of the course material. And, you don’t need to worry about modifying it over time because we handle that for you.

Here’s to a great 2021 full of relevant, current, compelling content! Please reach out if you need any help swapping out courses that contain Flash elements. We are here to advise.