Download flash based games?

December 16, 2007 2:30 PM

USAToday has embedded crosswords in Adobe .swf format: Is there any way to save these to my computer for later offline use? I tried Amazing Media Browser but it wants to re-download the game when I try to work the crossword.
posted by bbranden1 to computers & internet (12 comments total)

PS: I should add that I've tried downloading the .swf file (link found in the View Page Source option) to my hard drive, but when I click on the downloaded file, Windows asks me what application I'd like to use to open it, then gives a choice of Irfan Iview (it's web page doesn't list .swf as among the formats it supports) and Macromedia Flash (which seems to be web based and requiring redownload everytime the browser is opened rather than being user computer based).

So perhaps the real question is: is there a flash player that I can install on my computer that will load local and play .swf files?
posted by bbranden1 at 3:00 PM on December 16, 2007

The SWF doesn't contain the questions and answers, that's your problem, it just displays them. If you have the SWF alone, it's like having a DVD player, but no DVD.

The HTML refers to an XML file which has certain parameters in it, one of which is a data directory, the contents of which are not visible to a browser.

It's not impossible someone could figure out how to do it but it definitely won't be easy.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:04 PM on December 16, 2007

Honestly, the easiest way may be Print Screen, copy into any given image editing program, and print it.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 3:12 PM on December 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

There is a print option. Crossword puzzles are better with paper and pen anyway.
posted by caddis at 3:44 PM on December 16, 2007

I'm not sure how to download the USA Today crossword, but I thought I'd point out that other newspapers (with crosswords of a much higher caliber) put them online in Across Lite format, which is very portable, easy to print out, etc. See my previous FPP here. Try the New York Sun ones; they're especially good.

(Incidentally, the USA Today crosswords are universally considered to be the worst of the lot. The current and three-time champion of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, Tyler Hinman, often rails against the USA Today crossword in his blog. See 1, 2, 3, 4. The editor of the USA Today crosswords, Tim Parker, is the man behind that new crossword-themed game show, Let's Play Crosswords, and Hinman has lately been having fun pointing out flaws with the clues in that show.)
posted by painquale at 4:14 PM on December 16, 2007

If you're on a Mac, the trick is to print it, and then tell the print demon to print to a PDF file. (Or did they "fix" that?)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:08 PM on December 16, 2007

I'd prefer not to print it, but rather to use the keyboard shortcuts of the program (although of course never to solve words).
posted by bbranden1 at 5:19 PM on December 16, 2007

This claims to play SWF files locally.
posted by null terminated at 6:02 PM on December 16, 2007

Null terminated: good try. But there seems to be an addition file xw_control.xml required to play these things, presumably on the page where the crossword is located.
posted by bbranden1 at 7:06 PM on December 16, 2007

You know what application plays SWF files? Your browser! Believe me, finding a program to play the SWF is not your problem.

It is, as I said before, and you've just said yourself, that the SWF loads a file over the internet.

You could download that file and maybe tell the SWF to load it, but that file loads a third file over the internet, which has the questions and answers in it.

How are you going to do that, when you're not online? Especially as the third file's location is not apparent from looking into the second file.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 7:55 PM on December 16, 2007

bbranden1 - No easy answer for this one. Printing is your best bet.

For anyone coming back here to look at this question later, the best way to do this is to use a proxy and look at the logs. Find out exactly which files are being downloaded. If they use relative mapping (no http://www.website.com/etc), you might be able to get away with putting them in the same directory (or directory structure) on your hard drive. If not, you can configure a local web server and play with your hosts file to make them work.

I do this for my kids, so they don't have to navigate web sites to find the games they like.
posted by bh at 8:22 PM on December 16, 2007

Durrr, I didn't see it had the print option in the crossword.

I'm Canadian, so I never go to USAToday, so when you said 'embedded' I thought you meant 'embedded, and they are douches.'
posted by flibbertigibbet at 9:28 PM on December 16, 2007