By now you have probably heard about the release of Apple’s new toy the iPad. One of the biggest disappointments about the device so far is that again it is an apple device that will not initially support the Adobe Flash Player, much like the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Checking Twitter for comments about “Flash” and “iPad” you find a lot of disappointment:
@invaderkong: Wait….STILL NO FUCKING FLASH…yah iPad….I think I’ll wait till google copies ya and then makes you better
@sethruffer: iPad looks incredible….but no flash????without FlashI’m skeptical.
@tvilling: No it’s not a tablet computer – it’s a giant iPod Touch that does not do webpages with Flash #ipad #Apple pls. make a tablet macbookish.
Even Engadget chimed it support with a story about it within 15 minutes of the iPad announcement concluding.
Why no Flash Player on mobile devices hurts mLearning
The news of the lack of support for Flash on the iPhone and iPad is especially important to those involved in the learning industry. Why? Well the vast majority of eLearning training is delivered via Flash (using tools like Flash, Captivate, Articulate), and with so many prominent mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Android -yet) that don’t support any Flash Player eLearning developers are left waiting for devices to either support the Flash player, or another delivering system for eLearning content that doesn’t rely on the Flash Player.
If you listen to the folks at Adobe they will tell you that some form of Flash is available on most mobile devices, or will soon be coming to almost all mobile devices. Well if you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you. I left Macromedia/Adobe 4 years ago, and at the time everyone knew that the mobile platform was going to be the future. Mobile is the future everyone would say. Well here we are 4 years later and nobody I know actually has a mobile device that supports the Flash player. I could go on and on about the incompetence of the leadership at Adobe, but that isn’t the point of this post.
Why adding Flash on the iPhone/iPad doesn’t solve the mLearning problem
If Steve Jobs had announced that the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch would come with the Flash Player would the entire eLearning industry jump up and shout for joy because now mLearning would be achievable? Unfortunately no.
Why?
Not only do most mobile devices NOT support the Flash Player, but they also don’t support Java. Why does this matter? A big part of eLearning revolves around being able to not only VIEW content, but to also TRACK content. Tracking is fundamental to delivering formalized eLearning training, which usually involves Learning Management Systems. Here is the second part of the mLearning problem. Many Learning Management Systems use client side Java (meaning Java runs in the browser) to do the actual tracking with SCORM and AICC content.
I don’t know the specific percentage of Learning Management Systems that use Java, and given that there are several hundred to a thousand different LMS vendors on the market it is difficult to get an accurate count, but I did ask a couple of SCORM experts (Tim Martin and Mike Rustici from SCORM.COM) if they had any idea how many used Java. And the responses I got were:
- too many (Tim)
- few new deployments use Java, but hard to estimate the installed base of legacy SCORM implentations. (Mike)
So to Mike’s point, “few new deployments use Java,” this is good news. Problem is that many people are stuck on older learning management systems that still do use Java. Licensed versions of Learning Management Systems can be several hundred thousand dollars, and upgrading can either be prohibitively expensive, or difficult to manage, so organizations elect to not upgrade.
Conclusion
So my point is, even IF by some miracle the people at Adobe get the Flash Player on the iPhone/iPad it doesn’t completely solve the mLearning problem. Without also adding Java support we still won’t have tracking.
As a note: Articulate Online is and always has been Java free. So if the Flash Player problem is solved Articulate Online won’t have the tracking problem.
In case you are wondering, I left Adobe, I was not fired. I own Adobe stock, and the incompetence of Adobe leadership bothers me as a stockholder in Adobe and stakeholder in the eLearning industry that relies on Flash.
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Fuel to the fire – here’s a great article detailing the technical reasons you won’t see Flash running on any mobile device any time soon.
http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/01/26/flash-iphone-skyfire/
Wow – I always thought Flash wasn’t on the iPhone because Steve Jobs was still hoping Quicktime would make a comeback as an interactive media tool. So the problem is on Adobe’s end?
@arlyn thanks for the link…exactly.
@willswords you should check out the link that Arlyn posted.
I too originally thought that about Quicktime, but in fairness the iPhone supports HTML5, and HTML5 in part is aimed at reducing the need for proprietary 3rd party plug-ins like Quicktime, Flash, Silverlight and Java. So yeah, the iPhone uses Quicktime to play video, but it uses HTML5 so that desktop applications don’t need any type of plugin to view the video.
I for one celebrate the lack of Flash on the iPad/Pod/Phone. For all the angst it has created, it has also helped usher in support for new HTML5 features and related functionality. Apple’s devices all support the latest Webkit features, meaning CSS3 (including transforms and shadows), local storage, @font-face, and other goodies.
Likewise, a lack of support for client-side Java is GREAT news for the e-learning community because NO ONE WANTS APPLETS! I mean, seriously… applets are yuckos. They slow down the machine and are often completely unnecessary anyway. Anytime I see an applet I lose confidence in the product and have flashbacks of 1996.
All m-learning (and e-learning) needs is solid HTML support, solid CSS support, and solid JavaScript support. This ensures the widest adoption, eliminates reliance on proprietary formats (and the timelines of vendors who manage the formats), provides the greatest flexibility for displaying content, and works everywhere.
Great post Dave. The team at Litmos have been talking about how great the new iPad could be as a m-learning device so I was shocked to find out the iPad doesn’t support Flash.
@Philip I agree, HTML5 and CSS3 open up the door for exciting new standards based interactive content. It will be interesting to see if any of the major content creation vendors implement this as an output option.
@Dave… Articulate to HTML5 as a publish setting in the future?
On the Java topic, Litmos is 100% Java free so will track content beautifully once the content issues are solved.
@Philip really good points. One problem I see is that there are things that are possible in Flash that aren’t possible in HTML5, like what software simulation tools offer, you can’t produce the interactivity with HTML5 video, and trying to build something similar in pure HTML/CSS/JS seems nearly impossible. But as for decreasing the reliance on proprietary formats, totally.
@Rich some of our tools already support HTML5
Screenr’s iPhone pages use HTML5 for the video.
Also Rich, really good to hear that Litmos doesn’t use client side Java.
Thanks for the comments guys.
” @Philip really good points. One problem I see is that there are things that are possible in Flash that aren’t possible in HTML5, like what software simulation tools offer, you can’t produce the interactivity with HTML5 video, and trying to build something similar in pure HTML/CSS/JS seems nearly impossible. But as for decreasing the reliance on proprietary formats, totally.”
If Flash is not the future and already seems to have ” a sell by date”, and HTML 5 can’t do the job at the moment, where is Articulate going to ensure it maintains its premier position in the e/m learning arena?
Hey Bruce,
Thanks for the comments.
I can’t comment about what products or what will be in the future versions of Articulate’s products, but as an FYI, some of our products do already support HTML5. Screenr for example uses HTML5 if it detects that the browser is an iPhone/iPod touch and then uses HTML5 for displaying the video.
There was a good post the other day by Christopher Blizzard (of Mozilla fame) about HTML 5 video and H.264 that explains some of the licensing problems with H.264 (as H.264 is a proprietary format) being the standard for HTML 5 video. It is worth checking out:
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/
-Dave
I’d just like to add that I’m not anti-Flash, I’m anti-Flash-as-a-first-option. I completely understand there are things you can do in Flash that are pretty much impossible in HTML, and that’s a-ok with me. My biggest beef with the e-learning industry is that they tend to go all-in with Flash, instead of using it only for those special items — interactions, screen simulations, animated charts, etc. — that can’t be done with HTML and JavaScript.
I’m just skipping Flash on the phone and waiting for holograms that project into the air. (with a “scratch and sniff” plugin) Great info Dave!
Flash on the iPad would make for a very beneficial m-learning tool. Although Flash is currently not supported on the iPad or iPhone, that doesn’t mean developers and designers should write off the iPad as a bad m-learning device. I think Philip makes a good point when saying m-learning needs HTML support, solid CSS support, and solid JavaScript support.
The moral of this article and the whole iPad, iPhone, iTouch Flash controversy is that we are relying on Flash way to much! Flash is good and has many many uses BUT it’s not the ONLY thing that can be used to portray mobile learning. Many web site companies have adapated to the no Flash uses and have created great web sites, for instance, http://www.wunderground.com. This site has a specific mobile interface and I find it very easy to navigate through. Why can’t the elearning companies work there way around Flash like wunderground did? I think the answer is due to laziness and conformity Flash. This blog mentioned that it was Adobe who was lazy and that there administration is lazy. This may be true, but the elearning developers are just as lazy for not coming up with a solution other than trying to convince Flash to be used on mobile devices. In closing, I want to say Adobe is not the one to blame here, it’s the elearning developers and the mobile device makers. And Dave, I wouldn’t worry to much about your stock. Adobe is a strong company with a bright future, don’t be so hard on them.
Informations in this post aren’t true. At first – LMS use JavaScript API for tracking less Java. At second – there is no problem in Flash. This is very mature and flexible technology which based not only on video but many other features.
At third – there is no need to install plug-in. 98 on 100 users have installed
Flash still is the king.
@Lesiu,
I think the usage of Java in production LMS’s is higher than you think. I know a great deal of our customers are still using legacy Learning Management Systems that still rely on Java, and yes, I know the differences between Java and Java script. The LMS market has been slow to adopt new standards and technologies in general, as you can see by the SCORM 1.2 (2001) adoption rate being so much higher than SCORM 2004. Fewer modern LMS’s use Java, but many people purchased them when it was en-vogue to use Java. As to your statements about Flash being king, it isn’t on mobile devices, which was the point of the article. I still have yet to see in person any mobile device running Flash, so although 98% of desktop computers run Flash, I am guessing less than %1 mobile devices do.
So yeah, the fact that 98% of desktop machines have the Flash player make it a great platform for eLearning on Desktops, but it doesn’t for mobile platforms until/if we see such high adoption on mobile.
-Dave