And I just came across some excellent blog posts written by their technical director, Alex Mackman (@AlexAtCMGroup). In the age of the Flash vs. HTML5 Ring of Death, I really value well-reasoned opinions and correct information, and he’s giving both. Flash and HTML5 for eLearning is the most recent.
I should note: Luminosity Studio publishes to both HTML5 and Flash.
1) Don’t panic. This doesn’t mean someone is going to reach into your phone or computer and take away software that you — or your learners — already have. How long has it been since Internet Explorer 6 has been in active development? And yet… it’s still around in more organizations than I want to know about.
2) Having said that, mobile devices and mobile browsers get upgraded more frequently than desktop/laptop ones, so there’s an increased chance that your — and your learners’ — next mobile devices won’t play Flash content.
I’m still seeing a lot of posts covering this issue that are either very sensationalistic or self-serving, in my view. But what I find most interesting in the whole “HTML5 vs. Flash” debate is that people are mostly arguing about when the future is getting here. There is very little disagreement that the future is HTML5.
Adobe has been working on the ability to convert Captivate-created SWFs to HTML5 for some time, so I hear. I never made time to try this converter when it was in beta, but I made a contact at DevLearn who let me know this was on its way… and with full interactivity, not just exporting to video.
It looks like the converter is now at “Preview 2″ stage. Here’s the press release from Adobe, including a link to download. I’ll definitely be carving out some time to try this out in the next couple of days. Feel free to let me know about your experiences here!