5 Replies Latest reply: Sep 4, 2012 9:30 AM by sinious RSS

    is it a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning course.

    rahimhaji Community Member

      Dear Friends,

       

      Iam working for a company which is developing e-learning courses in Flash with AS3, Learning management system in dot net. There was a discussion with my superior, one guy was telling nowadays flash users reduced, in future flash will be outdated. This is not a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning.

       

      Another issue is we cannot show our courses in ipad or Iphone.. please pass your comments and ideas to me. and suggest me, whether how can i use my swf courses in to ipad or iphone or tablets... Tell me whether iam in a right way.

       

      i need another info, Whether silver light will be an alternate to create elearning courses with interactivity? That guy suggested Silverlight (because he is a dot net guy).

       

      i need ur serious advice and info. Please tell me, list of companies using flash for Elearning development.

       

      Kindly advice me whether i can continue my courses in Flash with AS3 or should i stop and change my work environment.

       

       

      Regards,

      Syed Abdul Rahim

        • 1. Re: is it a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning course.
          Ned Murphy CommunityMVP

          If you wish to design for e-learning via handheld devices, then you probably want to focus on using Adobe AIR.  Here is a link to an Adobe article regarding the plans for Flash/AIR...

           

          http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html

           

          If you have any questions you can probably address them to the Adobe employee who responded in the following forum posting...

           

          http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1040941?tstart=30

          • 2. Re: is it a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning course.
            sinious CommunityMVP

            The contents of what you're trying to teach make all the difference.

             

            Are your tests very visual requiring interactivity with visual objects and media or are you just asking questions with various form-esque inputs (text inputs, radio inputs, etc)?

             

            If it's very visual then it's worth considering AIR to some small extent but you'd really need to have a lot of time invested for that.

             

            Ultimately I'd be converting it to HTML5/JS/CSS3. That's the 99.9% positivity rated presumption I'll make. As a general consideration, where Flash may previously have been used to "grade" a paper or tell the user their current answer is correct, this might need to change. You should be sending the users answer to a server to get a response. JavaScript is plain-text and can be read so you'd want to curb cheating by making sure the server contains the answers and not the client. This is an automation you'll lose by abandoning SWF. 

             

            I use C#.NET myself and I'd avoid silverlight like the plague. Let's be very clear here. Flash is not going away. They are repositioning themselves to handle more sophisticated endeavors in the future like full 3d games. Flash is auto-installed with the OS, the user base is not getting smaller. Silverlight almost never had a purpose to begin with, besides Microsoft just wanted a sandbox to play in itself. Windows Metro is the only potential obstacle in the future as it has been said to load SWF content externally, like an application, rather than embedded into the browser.

            • 3. Re: is it a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning course.
              rahimhaji Community Member

              Dear Mr.Ned Murphy,

               

              Greetings! thks a lot for ur explaination. after reading this link:

               

              http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html

               

              in android portion, it tell that in version 11.4 onwards there is no support for flash player in android. That means i cannot show my flash works in mobile phones and ipad?

               

              please explain me, if i want to show my flash works in ipad or mobile phones, what should i do?

               

               

              Thanks and Regards,

              Syed Abdul Rahim

              • 4. Re: is it a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning course.
                dmeN Community Member

                There's just too many processor types to try and optimize player for mobile. You can still use AIR to package for iDevices and Android though.

                • 5. Re: is it a wise decision to use flash for e-Learning course.
                  sinious CommunityMVP

                  You can say there's a variety of form factors and display resolutions  but there really isn't a variety of processors and GPUs. Similar to desktop PCs, you can get a million motherboard/case/monitor combos that make it look different but under the hood they're all extremely similar and have been for several years.

                   

                  Flash is great for animations but too many people use it for actual content that simply shouldn't. It's bad for devices due to misuse and SEO.

                   

                  FP11.1 is excessively capable. Everything on the web to this moment can be performed on that version and many years into the future the overwhelming vast majority of content will also. I used FP8 when 10.2 was rampant, simply because I didn't need the features and didn't ever want my audience to see a "update flash player" obstacle. There's no need to worry about 11.1 and capabilities or it going away somehow.