The process of replacing Adobe Flash in your digital presence is not a simple one.

Flash has long been used for making banners, video players and rich experiences inside of the browser, as well as authoring enterprise scale applications outside of the browser — and lots of stuff in between. Adobe’s Flash technology, in short, has filled a huge number of uses — gaps that can now be seen clearly in the landscape of digital experiences on web, desktop and device. And there’s no single technology currently available that is actually capable of replacing the various roles filled by Flash.

Because the choice in technology can often influence production workflow, design parameters — and even the nature of your sales process — it is clear that the migration from Flash technology is going to lead to some pretty significant changes in your operation, even if you had only relatively minor exposure to Flash.

When you approach the challenge of porting old Flash experiences to new technologies, or formulating new solutions in the absence of Flash, you will be confronted with a series of sometimes difficult questions with the Adobe Flash alternatives. Basic questions like:

• What skills do you need on your teams?
• What tools should you get for your team?
• What features can you offer your clients?

Indeed, many hours will be spent over the coming 12 to 24 months answering questions that you thought had already been resolved.

And we, at Almer/Blank, are here to help you, leveraging our deep knowledge of the Flash Platform, along with our expertise at developing solutions in native technologies. Below, you will find a summary of some of the top-level issues involved in these decisions.

For the Web

Of course, the only alternative to Flash *inside* of the browser is HTML5. But the issues can get a bit complex, and anyone who tells you ‘oh, just do it in HTML5’ really doesn’t get it.

If you’ve been doing a lot of Flash for browsers, these are among the questions you might be considering in the near future as you start to work with HTML5:

• Will HTML5 work to replace Flash in your site? Or will you have to sacrifice features?
• Of the features that are supported in HTML5, how do they work? What will the resulting UX be? How do you get your UX team familiar on the range of possibilities for HTML5?
• What do you plan to do to support the ~50% of desktop users who can not view HTML5? Yes, HTML5 is now supported in the latest versions of all browsers, but there are a lot of older browsers out there on desktops. (For a pretty comprehensive summary of browser support, I encourage you to visit CanIUse.com).
• Do you have sufficient QA resources on-hand to do real cross-platform debugging (the more complex an experience you want to build, the more bugs will appear).
• Are there any Flash-enabled features on your site that are very important, but impossible in HTML5? If so, should you consider app-ifying them?
• If you have existing, legacy Flash content, to what uses can that be applied?
• What tools do you need to buy (for yourself or your team)? What about Adobe Edge and Wallaby?
• If your production resources remain unchanged (or you work for yourself) what’s the scope of project that you can realistically hope to achieve? (Hint: it’s something much smaller than if you were working in Flash).

For Apps

The world of Flash-powered apps (for desktop and device) is still pretty young and small. Even so, a number of firms have been using Flash for application development (including some notable ones, like TweetDeck) — and many of these firms will now likely need to migrate their experiences to other technologies.

Unlike the question of building for the web, there are multiple possible replacements for Flash for producing desktop and device apps. Of course, native code is a very attractive option. If you move from Flash to native code, you will not lose *ANY* functionality — if anything, you may be able to execute a few additional features on the devices. But, you may need to change various aspects of your workflows, and your team integration.

And, of course, you will lose your ability to publish to multiple platforms from a single code-base (this increases not only the cost of developing for multiple platforms, but also the cost of support and updates for those platforms).

If your feature-set is relatively simple, and you wish to distribute to all multiple devices, you can consider cross-platform solutions like HTML5. And, if your work is specialized, you can consider specialized tools appropriate for the task (like Unity for games).

In Between

This is a period of great transition for digital experiences. The web itself is radically changing in the nature of experiences it can offer, at the same time as many experiences once only available through the web are now available as dedicated applications. Sometimes, it makes sense to offer the same experience through your site, as through your apps (think of the golden era of Netflix) — and many times it does not. Because, in most cases, the nature, benefits and intended-uses of websites and apps are actually quite different.

And, among the implications of Flash’s departure as a viable solution for browser-based experiences, we will find that some web experiences will migrate to applications. That is, rather than evolve to an insufficient HTML specification, firms will choose to move specific functionality into applications.

Again, this is part of a broader discussion on digital presence, that has been accelerated by Adobe’s moves. And, for those who seek to offer consistent experiences on every screen, both inside and out of the browser, you may be disappointed with what cross-platform means to HTML5.

Yes, you can make one app for all mobile platforms with HTML5. And you can make one app for desktops with HTML5. And you can make your site in HTML5, too! Sounds good, right? But, that’s actually three different codebases (unlike Flash, where you could achieve the same distribution from one codebase).

Disruption

We are at a point of tremendous disruption in how great digital experiences are conceived, designed, created and distributed. There are no clean answers. But you can still make informed decisions. And the longer you wait, the more of a headache you are creating for yourself.

Get on it now. Contact us and learn more.