How to save Adobe Flash files in Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer

Adobe flash is proving itself to be a standard for the rich web context. It is widely used for creating animation, banners, glitters and more of interactive web contents. With increasing support by most modern browsers for the PC, it is also compatible with smartphones, android, and most standalone handheld devices.

What is Flash? Why do we need to save it?

Flash files are basically adobe shockwave files, with an extension ‘swf’ attached to them. Flash files are embedded in a webpage to avail multimedia content within a website.

The flash files on a website may contain audio, video, flash games, banners, and other embedded material that you can use in your own projects, or for your own interests. Unfortunately, most of browsers do not have a direct option to save the flash files, as it may lead to copyright or privacy infringement of the website owners. But we still have multiple methods to save a flash file from a website to our own computer, discussed as following methods.

Saving Directly from Browser
For Internet Explorer Browser
1. On the menu bar, click Tools>Internet options
(If you can’t see the menu bar, hit ‘Alt’ key once from keyboard to make it visible)
2. Find “Browsing History” there click on the “Settings” button.
3. Now you can see a dialog box showing options for “Temporary internet files”, there click on “View Files”, it opens a folder where you can find all the flash files.
4. Sort the files by type, and select the files you want to save.

For Mozilla Firefox Browser
1. Open the webpage which you want to save content from.
2. Hit “Ctrl” and “U” keys together, it will open the page containing HTML source for the webpage.
3. Find the link for swf file you want to save, and drag it to the local folder you want to save in your own computer. It will download the particular flash content to your PC.

Using Third Party Utilities Plugins and Add-Ons

We can install several custom scripts for the browser that may help to save flash content with much ease. The scripts are called Plug-in for Internet explorer, for the mozilla firefox, these scripts are known as an add-on. These facilities are available on internet free of cost and can be easily installed in a browser within minutes. But the users must be aware that these facilities can control the information we share over the internet, and therefore you must be very careful while choosing a plugin or add-on for your browser.

Utility Software

As you see, it is not always safe using a browser plugin. But you can find third party software to download the flash content for you. Most modern downloader software includes the facilities to save any particular content from a webpage. You can set the options in your software to automatically save the flash (.swf) content being displayed on the webpage, or stored in browser cache. Some specific software’s that are used to save flash content are Avant, IDM and Maxthon.

Now you are able to save the flash content from any webpage you want, but make sure not to copy any content which is copyrighted, restricted or confidential. Hope this article could help you, happy surfing.

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and autos. Beside this she is fond of cars and cameras. Recently an article on electric wheelchair attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on wireless security.

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