July 3, 2018
Migrating Legacy Flash Courses Is Still Worth The Money
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(8)
July 3, 2018
Migrating Legacy Flash Courses Is Still Worth The Money
I am a Learning Professional with 15+ years of experience in strategizing and providing learning solutions for varied customer requirements. I work with several global customers in understanding their business challenges and proposing optimal learning solutions that are backed by apt learning strategies to enhance their employee performance. I head Tesseract Learning and we have carved a niche for ourselves in the learning space. I have a team of experienced industry experts who provide solutions to meet any customer training needs on Blended Learning, eLearning, Mobile learning, Microlearning, Game based learning, AR/VR, Adaptive Learning, Simulations, high end learning technology integrations, video and animations development. 
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Who would have thought that the once popular Flash which is still loved by many would slowly be phased out and replaced by HTML5 and other responsive ready frameworks? I share my perspective on why migrating relevant Flash courses is still worth the money.

The Best Practices Of Migrating Legacy Flash Courses

I still love Flash!

Don’t get me wrong. I still love Flash. I have seen extremely rich and interactive courses being developed in Flash over the years. However, the matter of the fact is that Adobe Flash has been dropped from all popular browsers and the support for Flash is going to be stopped completely from 2020 onwards. Currently, users need to activate Flash manually on browsers supporting Flash.

So, should organizations having their legacy courses with really good content be scrapped completely? Of course not.

Already, several organizations have migrated their legacy courses to HTML5, and as we read this article, some are migrating, while others are contemplating to migrate or rebuild the courses from scratch.

Your learning team may not have the resources or HTML5 skills to convert the courseware. This is a huge challenge to every organization who still has Flash courses in use. But you need not worry anymore!

What Can You Do To Address This Challenge?

I bet you are going to like this. If you have any legacy Flash courses still relevant to your learners, you have multiple options to consider for Flash to HTML5 migration as listed below.

1. Straightforward Migration

Migrate Flash courses to HTML5 compatible easily using services like MigrateEazy. You need to only have your Flash source files for this migration strategy. Your existing courses will look alike when they are migrated. They can work seamlessly on PC and Tablet post-migration.

2. Visual Enhancement And Migration

Enhance the visuals of the courses by revisiting the User Interface, key design elements and continue to use the Flash source files to migrate them with ease using services like MigrateEazy. Again, these migrated courses work on seamlessly on PC and Tablet.

3. Ground Up Approach

This approach can be used If your content is still relevant or content updates need to be made to meet the changing needs of the organization/learners. Accordingly, we can strategize to rebuild them using latest learning strategies. While doing this, you can consider having these courses be only compatible with PC or tablets or make it fully responsive to work on Smartphones too.

The first option is the most economical one followed by the second option. The third option requires additional planning, skillsets and time in identifying the right strategy and then you can carry out the development.

Is Migration An Easy Process?

Migrating legacy Flash to HTML5 is an easy process using services like MigrateEazy. These are highly flexible and agile solutions to migrate legacy eLearning courses easily for HTML5 delivery. Irrespective of the legacy authoring tool used for your course development, these solutions help you develop the HTML5 version of the course easily by mapping the right templates to your existing content without compromising on the required functionalities.

The repository of HTML5 templates ensures that the migration of your legacy content to HTML5 is a smooth process with aesthetically appealing learner experience, cost-effective designs and modern layouts.

Experience Of Migrating Courses

We have successfully migrated more than 730 courses so far. With this vast experience, our team of experienced instructional and usability specialists will work closely with your team to create cost-effective yet instructionally, visually, and functionally rich designs to meet your project requirements.

Be it a need for straightforward migration or visually enhancing them or do a ground-up approach, we will create a smooth journey for your team.

How Can They Be Impactful?

As Flash had innumerous features and possibilities, expectations have been to replicate the same in HTML5 too. Today, everyone is accepting what really is feasible in HTML5 compatible development tools.

However, if the source of the legacy course is in Flash, then we will be able to retain the same experience for the learner even after migration, this is possible for both straightforward migration and subtle visual enhancement. When a migration strategy is a ground-up approach, then we will need to factor for the authoring tool that is used before deciding on the experience it can offer to the learners.

A couple of examples of migrated courses are given below:

Example 1: This course, which was on a technology subject was still relevant when the decision to migrate it was taken. Hence, we had to only change the look and feel of the User Interface and retain all the visuals and text as is for the migration.

You can see the screens for before and after below:

Before Migration

Migrating-legacy-Flash-courses-is-still-worth-the-money1

After Migration

Migrating-legacy-Flash-courses-is-still-worth-the-money2

Example 2: The original course on Drug Discovery had a dated design but the content was quite relevant. Hence the content was slightly updated to meet the current trends. We took the course source files, modified the content and redesigned the course.

You can see the before and after below:

Before Migration

Migrating-legacy-Flash-courses-is-still-worth-the-money3

After Migration

Migrating-legacy-Flash-courses-is-still-worth-the-money4

Conclusion

At Tesseract Learning, we have helped numerous organizations in migrating legacy courses in Flash to HTML5 using varied strategies as explained above. If you have legacy Flash courses and wondering how to migrate the relevant courses, we can be of help to you.

Our design strategists are the right experts you can turn to for the migration solutions. To discuss how we can help migrate your Flash content to HTML5, do write to me at suresh@tesseractlearning.com.

8 Comments
2018-07-04 15:46:28
2018-07-04 15:46:28

I know some will curse me again, but when wrong terminology is used I cannot just keep silent. Flash is still very much alive, it is the application (now labeled Animate CC) that allows to create games (most games are created with it) but is also at the basis of AIR applications. What will be dropped is the Flash Player, which is a plugin for browsers that allowed to play SWF output. It used to be a standard, which is not the case for HTML at all.
Phil, Flash application, now renamed to ANimate CC, allows to create animations with output both to SWF and to OAM. I tried to explain before what will really Ebe OL, the Flash Player for desktop browsers. Since Captivate output to SWF is meant to play in a web browser, developers need indeed to switch to HTML output, and a lot more testing because of the diffferences between browsers. OAM’s do not need a Flash Player. I don’t understand the question about MS Office?
JS is for HTML output what AS was for SWF output That is the great advantage of using advanced and shared actions: when published to SWF they are converted on runtime to AS3, when published to HTML they are converted to JS. Hear the Advanced and Shared Actions defender. For communication with an OAM (only needed when Effects cannot do it) I use JS indeed.

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Lieve Weymeis
's comment
2018-07-04 15:57:48
2018-07-04 15:57:48
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Lieve Weymeis
's comment

Lieve, appreciate you providing the clarification. I agree with you about Animate CC. However, loads of people are not aware that Flash is now being renamed as Animate CC. As the SWF cannot run on latest browsers and devices, they have to migrated to HTML5 format.

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Suresh Kumar DN
's comment
2018-07-04 16:00:59
2018-07-04 16:00:59
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Suresh Kumar DN
's comment

I know, but using the word ‘Flash’ instead of ‘Flash Player’ is incorrect. An Animate file still has the extension FLA, the output to be viewed using a Flash Player is SWF, but such a file can also be published to HTML, same way as a cptx-file can publish output to SWF and to HTML. You don’t say that Flash is dying, nor that Captivate is dying, it is the output to SWF that becomes obsolete. Have been telling since almost two years that it is really time to prepare that migration from SWF output to HTML. Your blog is surely a good reminder, and probably will help pushing the ‘procrastinators’. Thanks for that.

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Lieve Weymeis
's comment
2018-07-05 17:14:08
2018-07-05 17:14:08
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Lieve Weymeis
's comment

I think this is just semantics. To the general public (i.e., everyone but Flash/Animate designers/devs), the term “Flash” is synonymous with the swf that is run via the Flash Player. Similar situation with java and the jvm. End users don’t think about the jvm. They simply ask, “Is it a java app?”

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2018-07-04 15:21:03
2018-07-04 15:21:03

Thank you for the post. I had not heard of MigrateEazy but will look it up. I am still making some SWF files that are embeded within PowerPoint. Because Adobe said they would stop the Flash Player development for browsers in 2020, is MS Office affected by this?

I also make HTML5 animations and save them as OAM files to import into Captivate. It works really well. You can also use JavaScript to communicate between the two technologies.

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Phil Cowcill
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2018-07-04 15:58:30
2018-07-04 15:58:30
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Phil Cowcill
's comment

Thanks for the update and the approach you take.

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2018-07-03 21:38:31
2018-07-03 21:38:31

Thank you for the post Suresh! This is relevant to those of us who have worked government jobs! Legacy issues are always looming in all areas…to include training. Nicely done.

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Shelly Gooden
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2018-07-04 15:58:57
2018-07-04 15:58:57
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Shelly Gooden
's comment

Thanks for the appreciate Shelly

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