Skip to main content
Known Participant
September 12, 2019
Question

SWF in PDF

  • September 12, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 315 views

I have been successfully creating interactive PDFs by developing SWFs in Adobe Animate and then porting them into InDesign then exporting them. Hurray! My question... will I still be able to create these interactive PDFs after 2020? Thanks.

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    September 24, 2019

    You should probably start working on an alternative strategy. 

     

    Acrobat relies on the presence of the NPAPI Flash Player to play back SWF content.  When Flash reaches EOL in 2020, we're not going to be updating the NPAPI Flash Player.  This means that the folks that consume your PDF would need a Flash Player installed that will never get another security update, and at some point, the operating system will probably change in a way that ultimately breaks any legacy installations.  So, you could probably get away with it for a minute, but it's really highly dependent on how long you need those PDFs to live for and stuff. 

     

    Depending on what you're doing, you might look at something like Adobe Captivate for interactive learning content or Adobe XD for interactive UI prototyping as a replacement.  If we understood your use-case, we might be able to offer some better recommendations.

    slipperAuthor
    Known Participant
    September 24, 2019
    Thanks for getting back to me. I'm disappointed to hear that the Flash Player needed for PDFs is going away. I had heard that news regarding browsers, but was hopedful that it wasn't universal. 😞 My customers like receiving the interactive PDFs for it's stand-alone quality. I'm not knowledgeable about Captivate or XD but i'm guessing they are browser based. I'll take a look.