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Flash apocalypse (seriously) it’s a thing that’ll hurt mature sites in mid-2019

 
Austen Sinclair
Flash apocalypse (seriously) it’s a thing that’ll hurt mature sites in mid-2019
by Austen Sinclair - Sunday, 9 December 2018, 7:53 PM
Group PartnersGroup TXP Site Administrator
Adobe Flash goes end-of-life in December 2020 but effective browser supports ends mid 2019.

In discussing this with our clients and wider in the NZ Government Totara User Group we found an absence of awareness of the problem and its scale. It seems the core problem is that web & IT folk think Flash is a historical problem and L&D folk & LMS administrators don’t have much visibility of the mass of Flash content still inside their SCORM packages. 

Particularly vulnerable are sites which have been using Totara for a few years and have in the past been tied to IE as an organisationally mandated browser. We’re calling it the Flash Apocalypse. 

How to assess the scale of the problem? 
We’ve built a Flash apocalypse report and released via the Moodle.org plug-in page: https://moodle.org/plugins/report_apocalypse  

It works on Totara 2.9 and above and your partner shouldn’t have any trouble installing it in your site. For more information do read Dan Marsden’s blog post on this.  

Flash EoL support - summary by browser: 

  • Chrome: currently sites require specific approval to run Flash on first visit. Mid-2019 Flash player is disabled.
  • Firefox: currently users are choose which sites are allowed to use Flash. Mid-2019 Flash player is disabled.
  • Internet Explorer: currently has no restrictions. Flash player will be removed mid-2019, but users will be able to re-install the Flash player plug-in. It is our view that many corporate IT departments will not allow this – don’t forget that from 2015, IE was officially 'discontinued' software. It has no new features and is only maintained on the versions of Windows it shipped with (albeit this includes Win7, and Win10). 
  • Edge: currently sites need to be trusted and then require specific approval to run Flash. Mid-2019 Flash player is disabled, but can be re-enabled but will require 'per-use' approval. It's not clear if Edge's re-release in 2019 as a Chrome distribution will impact this but its unlikely to improve Flash support. 

Cheers
Austen

 
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Larry Mitipelo
Re: Flash apocalypse (seriously) it’s a thing that’ll hurt mature sites in mid-2019
by Larry Mitipelo - Monday, 10 December 2018, 10:44 AM
Group Most Helpful Contributor 2021Group Most Helpful Contributor 2022Group Most helpful contributor 2023

We ran the report on our site and found lots of content that was using Flash. Now we're analysing that content to work out what needs updating.

But the two most important things for us are:

  1.  that we are aware of the level of our risk
  2. we still have time to put a plan in place to deal with that risk.

I wouldn't want to be doing this mid next year and scrambling around then for a solution.

 
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Adin Coup
Re: Flash apocalypse (seriously) it’s a thing that’ll hurt mature sites in mid-2019
by Adin Coup - Tuesday, 18 December 2018, 6:23 PM
 

Thanks Austen!

This is a huge issue for us as content deliverers. This could become a very costly exercise especially if left to the last minute which is highly likely for many L&D departments.

More messaging around this from our suppliers and partners would be much appreciated as we do get buried in our work and forget to prioritise these things until the last minute and then there is a mad scramble to try and mitigate the affects of our procrastination.

Cheers

Adin


 
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Austen Sinclair
Re: Flash apocalypse (seriously) it’s a thing that’ll hurt mature sites in mid-2019
by Austen Sinclair - Thursday, 17 January 2019, 2:10 PM
Group PartnersGroup TXP Site Administrator

Update:

The end of Flash is only five months away. We have launched a Flash Apocalypse 'movie poster' (attached). It's supported by a web page and blog posts to assist Moodle & Totara managers determine if they are impacted by the EoL of Flash support in browsers and how to manage a Flash infestation. 


Flash apocalypse poster - small version for social media



So far most of our larger clients have installed the report and found on average close to a quarter of their live courses are dependent on Flash. This would have been a disaster (apocalypse?) if they only discovered this in June when their users started logging support calls for broken modules. 

Please spread the word!  

Cheers
Austen 





 
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