Save Shockwave Flash Animation on Web Sites

When you right click on a flash animation and try to save, you usually get two options - Settings & About Macromedia Flash player.

So there is no way to just right click and save a flash animation.Then you may try View>Source and try to locate the flash file and get the source code if you are lucky. But that will also not help, because even if you run it in the web browser again, how will you save it.

There are professional tools and plugins which will help you view and save flash in one go, but for a price. There are several free flash viewers which will only enable you to see flash files located on your computer, but not allow saving flash.

How to Save Flash

1.Finding the flash file
Open the Internet explorer >Tools > Internet Options > “Temporary internet Files” - click on Settings
Then in the Pop Window, look for “Temporary Internet Files Folder”

Click “View Files” .This will open the “Temporary Internet Files Folder”
You can sort files by Type by clicking on it. Or by date to see the latest files of you have a large cache. Under the type, you will see several files labelled as “Shockwave Flash Object”. You can right click on file you want, then “Copy”

Saving Flash files from Firefox

• Click Tools - Page Info
• Click the Media Tab on the Page Info Windows
• The media tab has a complete list (with preview) of Images, CSS Files and Shockwave Flash files that were downloaded by the Firefox browser while rendering (loading) the page.
• Scroll down the list and locate the swf file.
• Click the "Save As" button. Select some directory on your hard drive and save the file (No need for a third-party plug-in)

2.Unable to locate the file?
If you have a large number of files and are unable to locate the flash file you want, sort by date such that the latest date is on top. If there are still huge number of files, empty the temporary internet folder (Internet Explorer> Tools> Internet Options> Temporary Internet Files Folder> Delete Files>Delete all Offline content).

Now that your folder is clean, revisit the site and the flash file will be recached into this folder. If your file is lost amongst multiple flash files, then you can click these flash files, but that is best avoided. If you do click, an alert box will pop up. Click on Yes and the flash file will open in your default web browser.

        

3.See the source…
You can also find the source url of the flash movie easily. Right click the flash file in the temporary internet folder, select properties and it will reveal the full url. Similarly, once you click the file and ok the alert box above, the flash file url will appear in the location box.

4.Saving the flash file.
Now that you have the .swf shockwave file copied, you need a place to save it. Lets save it on the desktop, the easiest location to find on the computer. Right click on the desktop, and select “Paste”. The .swf flash file will be saved on the computer.

5.How to see if this file works?
Right click on the file and click > Open with > Internet explorer
and your flash file runs.

Category: Tips, Tutorial