By the end of 2020, Adobe have said they’ll stop supporting Flash.  As a result, your eLearning content that’s built around this plugin will essentially be, obsolete. 

So with a couple of years notice, I’d like to ask you a question - what’s your plan for eLearning after Flash is gone?

“we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020
 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content”
Adobe - July 2017

Flash has been with us for some 21 years and become the dominant platform for viewing multimedia content on the internet, but it’s not all been plain sailing.  Security issues have been a regular bugbear, with resource usage another.  

Apple have been openly critical of the software since 2010, but more recently browser suppliers such as Mozilla, Microsoft and Google have been making things that little bit more awkward for users by tweaking how the player runs within the browser.  

With the growing use of HTML5 as the standard for web multimedia content, Adobe have bitten the bullet and given users, developers and organisations three years to make the switch to other formats.

2020 may seem like your target date, but some caution is advised.  Mozilla (suppliers of the Firefox browser) have announced that from 2019, Flash will be disabled by default, and then from 2020, no version of Firefox will load the plugin.  If other browser suppliers follow suit, then not only will your Flash content be obsolete, it will just cease to operate.

If you are a site author relying on Flash to deliver video, games, chat, etc., getting up to speed with web platform alternatives would be a sensible move.

If you’re looking to buy eLearning content or managing it in your organisation, then make sure you have your strategy sorted to take these deadline dates into account.

 

Further reading:

HTML5 Authoring Tools To Seamlessly Move From Flash - eLearning Industry

Adobe Flash - End of Life