Preservação de recursos educacionais digitais em flash: uma abordagem com o emulador Ruffle

Abstract

This work addresses the challenge of preserving Digital Educational Resources (RED) following the discontinuation of Adobe Flash, which rendered a vast collection of interactive content from repositories like Athena inaccessible. In light of this, the research investigated the potential of Ruffle, an open-source Flash Player emulator, as a tool for the execution and preservation of these materials. The evaluation process consisted of analyzing ten RED from the Athena repository, covering different complexities and the ActionScript 1/2 (AS1/AS2) and ActionScript 3 (AS3) versions. The tests were conducted in five distinct environments: the Ruffle Desktop application for Windows and Ubuntu, and the extensions for the Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers. The results indicate that Ruffle was able to emulate a significant portion of the resources, demonstrating high compatibility with most of the content based on AS1/AS2. However, instabilities and functional failures were identified in RED with more complex functionalities developed in AS3. The study highlights that, although Ruffle is a promising tool for extending the lifespan of Flash collections, full compatibility has not yet been achieved, indicating the need for continued testing and the individual validation of each feature, as well as broadening the scope of the analysis to encompass more functionalities from other RED.