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michaelm19617145
michaelm19617145
Known Participant
January 13, 2020
Answered

Publish to PDF and Flash

  • January 13, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 285 views

We are currently using Adobe Captivate 9 and publish a lot of our training to PDF for offline viewing. How is the end of Flash going to affect these types of files? I know that browsers are going to stop supporting Flash but is Adobe going to stop providing their Flash Player? Is this going away too? For example, in one of out projects I have used text animation, which according to Captivate's "HTML5 Tracker," is not HTML5 compatible, but right now it plays fine when I view in the published PDF. Will this just not work eventually when the PDF is played? Thanks. 

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Correct answer RodWard

The short answer to your question is: YES, it's all going to stop working.

 

PDF only plays SWF content if your Acrobat Reader app has the Flash Player plugin.  Adobe announced several years ago now that 2020 was the year they stopped supporting Flash.  Acrobat Reader does not ship with the Flash Player plugin by default.  The end user needs to install it.  That's usually a big enough barrier to stop most people.  So if your learning strategy relies on PDFs that can play SWF content you are going to run into a brick wall very soon (if not already).  If your own PDF reader is able to play your content, that does NOT mean that everyone else you want to play your courses will have the same experience.

 

The Text Animation object in Captivate is an SWF widget.  That's why the HTML Tracker flags it as not compatible.  The same applies to several other things in Captivate, e.g. the Rollover Slidelet object. 

1 reply

RodWard
Community Expert
RodWardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
January 13, 2020

The short answer to your question is: YES, it's all going to stop working.

 

PDF only plays SWF content if your Acrobat Reader app has the Flash Player plugin.  Adobe announced several years ago now that 2020 was the year they stopped supporting Flash.  Acrobat Reader does not ship with the Flash Player plugin by default.  The end user needs to install it.  That's usually a big enough barrier to stop most people.  So if your learning strategy relies on PDFs that can play SWF content you are going to run into a brick wall very soon (if not already).  If your own PDF reader is able to play your content, that does NOT mean that everyone else you want to play your courses will have the same experience.

 

The Text Animation object in Captivate is an SWF widget.  That's why the HTML Tracker flags it as not compatible.  The same applies to several other things in Captivate, e.g. the Rollover Slidelet object. 

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