As of today, we’ve completed the critical first phase of our long term migration from Flash charts to HTML5 charts. This first phase is focused on making sure every member of your audience using a mobile device can see Multiple Choice charts and respond. iPad customers won’t see much of a change; but iPhone users should see a significant difference. Here’s an example:

Why the move to HTML5? Back in 2008, Poll Everywhere had to make a decision. What technology would we code our charts in? The answer was fairly easy:  Flash. Back then, most interactions with the internet were still on desktops and laptops.

Fast Forward to now. Advances in Wi-Fi and the near ubiquity of mobile devices and tablets make mobile the dominant way participants, and many presenters, use Poll Everywhere.

Unfortunately though, iOS devices don’t play well with Flash. Steve Jobs explained this back in 2010. In a nutshell: Flash has technical limitations that prevent us from making bigger leaps in polling innovation, and Apple’s decision not to support Flash means a growing number of mobile polling customers are having a sub-optimal experience.

Because of the quickly growing number of Poll Everywhere customers accessing our site via iOS, and because we promise to work on EVERY mobile device today, we decided to change the underlying technology behind our live charts.

This is only the first in a series of improvements you’ll see in charts in the weeks to come. The next few phases are:

• Participants: Moving Free Text Polls and Column charts into HMTL5 so participants can better access those as well.
• Allow presenters to edit visual settings for charts in mobile devices.
• Many more improvements that are made possible by the new technology HTML5 offers.

Let us know what you think of the new experience in the comments below, and as always, we’ll keep working hard to make sure you can use any mobile device with Poll Everywhere.