Flash Finally Gone In 2020: Tools To Convert Flash To HTML5 In 2021

Why is Flash going away after 2020?

Adobe Flash is going away because such open web standards as HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have developed and now occupy the dominant positions. They allow the same functionality, previously only available through the plugin, to be integrated directly into the browser.

A multitude of issues have been affecting Flash’s credibility for years. The main concern has always been lack of security as Adobe struggled to keep up with zero-day vulnerabilities being revealed every other month. Another downside of the player is that it was very heavy. At times Flash applications would drive CPU usage to 100% which would make users go crazy. Browser tabs with Flash content were always running in the background and viciously preying on systems resources, undermining the performance of currently active apps.

Despite the developed codebase and toolkit, these and other usability issues made content makers and leading digital platforms stray away from the once popular multimedia project. That is a bit sad, as ActionScript was a promising technology and far outweighed the capabilities of JavaScript-based frameworks and libraries in terms of multimedia. Developers had to write a big portion of code in JavaScript to extend the basic functionality to fit the requirements of a real project. Anyhow, Adobe failed to create a fundamental approach to close out the inefficiencies, so here we are now waving Flash goodbye.

Steve Jobs summarized the downsides of Flash pretty well back in April 2010:

• Flash is not an open-source platform which sets barriers for developers and thus seriously impedes development and application of security patches to address faults and vulnerabilities.
• Modern video formats, such as the H.264 no longer need to be coated with an overlay. It can easily be distributed across desktop and mobile devices via HTML5 native video and audio with its convenient Canvas model, thus rendering it is the best choice for new content developers.
• Adobe Flash is inherently unsafe and practically unstable, its security has been the main concern since its inception.
• The Flash standard has been designed for and remains centered on desktop devices. Whereas, the contemporary tech horizon is ruled by touch-based mobile devices that rely on lower power consumption with hardware-level decoding and open web standards.

Keeping all these shortcomings in mind, a vast majority of current content creators have wisely made the switch to developing multimedia and interactive web services based on the rich HTML5 platform. If your online products still have any kind of Adobe Flash dependencies, we highly recommend a timely Flash to HTML5 conversion.

Wondering how to play Flash games in 2021 and beyond?

Flash game players and particularly the fans take the hardest blow. There are no automated tools for Flash to HTML5 conversion for this type of content out there. An average game project contains multiple .fla files that rely upon several Actionscript libraries as well as external classes compiled at runtime, coupled with source code .as2 or .as3 files depending on when the game was made (the Actionscript version). To put it simply, there is no magic conversion tool available to seamlessly turn all this into HTML and JS files without any loss.

The only solution to this problem is to recode the game using HTML5 web technologies and this redevelopment process is definitely not cheap. Keeping this in mind, we should expect only the major Flash game titles having large communities of players to make this transition. Otherwise, if you still would like to enjoy the good old flash-based games you used to play, refer to the BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint project. These guys have worked hard to save over 100,000 games and more than 10,000 Flash animations on 35 different platforms through their web game preservation project.

HTML5 as the new web standard for multimedia content

Still wondering what will replace Flash? HTML5 and related technologies have been stepping on its heels for quite a while and now they are ready to take the throne. The latest version of HTML excels at adaptive content rendering – an area which was previously a serious setback. It also works smoothly for building mobile-ready applications, providing rich APIs whereas Flash was always struggling to accommodate mobile devices.

HTML5 is the latest development of the open web standards that allows creating more powerful and diverse websites with sophisticated multimedia and 2D/3D presentation technology built right in to allow immersive content viewing. With the help of native <video> and <audio> components, along with excessive JavasScript API to control interactive graphics, developers can embed first-class audio, video, and effects without the need to rely on third-party plugins such as Adobe Flash player.

The creation of 2D and 3D graphics has become much easier with HTML5 Canvas which is powered by WebGL technology and SVG format for vector graphics. WebGL (Web Graphics Library) is a JavaScript API that lets you take advantage of the device’s hardware graphics acceleration to provide high-performance 3D content rendering. It conforms with the widely accepted OpenGL standards to provide cross-platform compatibility.

SVG allows you to describe two-dimensional vector graphics which can be easily scaled without distortions to fit any screen size. It is also designed to be fully compatible with JavaScript, XML, DOM, CSS and other web tools. Having a markup-language structure, SVG images can be easily localized to any language by just programmatically updating the text within. You won’t even need a graphics editor for that matter.

HTML5 also presents intuitive and simple tools for creating subtitles and chapters in audio and video content, as well as Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) technology for controlling videoconferencing.

These simple open-source tools create a boundless environment for developers to build web products that can be used across all modern platforms, including touch-based devices.