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HTML5 Fans Rejoice – Adobe Ditches Flash Player on Mobile Devices

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Exciting news, I tell you. Especially for us fans of HTML5 who knew in our hearts of hearts that it was a superior product to Flash.

Adobe announced today, Nov. 9th, that it is abandoning its work on Flash for mobile devices and instead focusing on mobile development of development of HTML5 for mobile.

This will only empower folks in the e-learning industry who were pro-HTML5 and believed as I do, that it is the better route to go.

We didn’t have to drink the “Steve Jobs Kool-Aid” (as someone commented earlier in the year to me), rather we saw what it was capable of doing and Adobe clearly saw the writing on the wall.

Right now, at m-learning vendor locations around the world, especially in the RCAT space, they should be scheduling meetings and coming up with a new perspective and approach to their products.

For LMS vendors, adding “HTML5 feature sets makes sense – especially if they are adding mobile learning components in their system.  Listen, I was not always a Flash hater, but when I saw HTML5 over a year ago, I knew this was a better solution for the industry, for all of us.

I know there will be Flash lifers, heck their are people today who still prefer 8 track over CDs, but in our industry, those who focused solely on Flash for mobile devices, need to go back to the drawing board and decide what is best for the industry.

For vendors whose products are in the works for HTML5 output (ahem, in beta), perhaps speeding up the process wouldn’t be such a bad idea. True, you want to make sure the product is fully functional before putting it out onto the street, but you better realize that with this announcement, others are going to ramp up production on HTML5 output too.

I know if I was a RCAT vendor I would.

Right now.

Here are some previous posts on HTML5 and its impact

Fast Forward: E-Learning in 2013 – in the post, I state that RCAT vendors must adopt to using HTML5 over Flash

HTML5: Let the Games Begin – written in May 2010

Awesome Example of HTML5

Great example of the Power of HTML5 – Wilderness Adventure  – it is a music video by The Arcade Fire, uses Geolocation and other amazing capabilities – enter in your zip code – you see the action right in your own neighborhood and home. Everything was done in HTML5 including the video. I showed this last year at a conference I was speaking at on HTML5 and e-learning. Please use Chrome, as it does not do justice on IE, FF or Safari.

E-Learning 247

10 comments

    1. Uh, Android already supports HTML5 pretty well, at least as well as most other current browsers. In fact, as it’s a webkit browser, it uses the same rendering engine as Safari.

      The message of the announcement is not surprising, merely the timing. As an e-learning developer, I see this as a bit of a headache, if only because there are many things which Flash made easy which are much harder to do in HTML5. Try coding up a page which plays multiple audio files sequentially for example, it can be done, but requires a mess of Javascript *and* if you want to support FireFox requires you to encode your audio in multiple formats. I had hoped tools would be more mature before this day came.

      1. True, but from an iPad standpoint and thus iOS, this is a huge deal. Since the iPad/iPad2 dominate the tablet space, and in the education sector – is the primary product school districts, schools and governments are selecting as the tool to their students, its implications cannot be dismissed.

        Vendors as a whole have focused on Flash more so then HTML5 for the iPad market, and as you know, all tablets actually will work and support HTML5, but its the Apple iOS that is the key.

  2. I have to agree with Craig. As an educator myself I use the ipad in my classroom and wouldn’t know how to properly adapt to this change. If I can’t then I can’t expect my students to.

  3. So how are you going to build simulations in HTML5? And are you worried that in the history of HTML, there has never been a standard between browsers. So what works on IE6 doesn’t work on Firefox. Or what works on Safari doesn’t render the same on Chrome. If you’re not worried about these things, you should be.

    1. There are tools out there. From an authoring standpoint – which is the key point of this post, RCATs are coming out with output and build in HTML5. All the latest browsers have increased their support for HTML5, and the W3C has stated that their goal is by 2023 for all web sites, to use HTML5. As for standards, you can make the same argument for any of the standards used in e-learning, SCORM 2004 4th edition (is very rarely used), AICC, PENS, IEEE, etc.

      As for older versions of browsers, the same can be said for Flash. IE6 does not support the later versions of Flash. It is interesting to note, that in the next version of IE, they have dumped Flash support.

      If you have an older browser or one that does not support HTML5 or are using a device that does not support HTML5 (and btw, all the tablets do), then it has a sniffer – so it will auto display what the browser does support. This is similar to 2000, when Netscape supported Java and Microsoft did not – during the Sun battle.

      The power of HTML5 as it relates to e-learning is with the mobile learning, specifically tablet space. Tablets are the drivers for m-learning, not smartphones.

  4. Maybe you haven’t seen the HTML 5 output from Captivate, which is really the leading simulation creation tool out there. It’s buggy, and frankly, if they were looking to encourage those of us who produce eLearning, they did the opposite by posting it on the net. If you know of other simulation creation tools that output to HTML5 and the output is usable, please let me know, because I’ll start using it tomorrow. And I mean that sincerely, not snarkily.

    In terms of standards and browser support, you’ve actually illustrated one of my problems with HTML5, when you say “Please use Chrome, as it does not do justice on IE, FF or Safari.”

    And Microsoft hasn’t really dumped Flash support. What they have done is hedge their bets:

    “As part of a series of Windows 8-related announcements at this week’s Build developer conference, the company announced that its upcoming operating system will ship with two versions of Internet Explorer 10: one will be an iteration of the traditional desktop browser, complete with plug-in support, while the other will run in the tile-based Metro interface Gamasutra…”

    So two versions. One with, and one without.

    Sorry if I seem defensive about all of this. But it’s because I’m on calls ever day where clients are asking about training on iPads, and my answer is, you can either have a straight HTML course with some graphics and videos, but no synched audio or interactive simulations, or you can have video. Right now, keeping cost and time in mind, those are your only two realistic options. HTML5 aside from drag and drop, and the video tag just doesn’t offer the functionality.

    1. Captivate doesn’t have an output for HTML5. The best product from HTML5 output is Claro, look at them. Lectora isn’t a true HTML5 output. Although Toolbook has.

      It is a small growing space..considering that nobody had one in 2010, the early stages look promising. The best option for people who want killer HTML5 output is to seek out a custom dev. shop – more so than a RCAT, but if you r seeking a RCAT the ones out there offer solid opps.

  5. I all of the rejoicing above everyone forgot to mention one thing, Apple devices should NOT HAVE blocked flash content. That is both illegal and egoistic.

  6. Nice post. It would be even better if this site featured stand demos of these features so that users can get a clean look at the code. Please add a demo section containing a working implementation plus an explanation of the code.Buying and taking that plugin of html5 media player and integrating it into WP is really good for beginers

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