SOLVED: How to Copy .SWF or Animated .GIFs, or any Content From a Web Site

Usually you can save content from a website by RIGHT CLICKING your mouse and selecting SAVE but some content like Flash Files (.SWF) and animated GIF’s just don’t work that way.  When you right click on an .SWF Flash element you will not see the SAVE option and if you right click and save an animated .GIF you will only save one of the slides from the .GIF, not all of them.

Sooo, all you need to do is think bigger.  Instead of saving the elements, just save the whole page, then dig out the files you need.

Internet Explorer:

1. press the ALT key to bring up the FILE, EDIT, HELP menu bar
2. click FILE
3. click SAVE (or SAVE AS, depending on your version of IE)

FireFox / Mozilla:

1. press the ALT key to bring up the FILE, EDIT, HELP menu bar
2. click FILE
3. click SAVE PAGE AS and make sure the TYPE is set to WEB PAGE, COMPLETE

This process will likely only take a few seconds. Go to the place you saved the page and not that there is a FOLDER with the same name as the page.  That folder will contain all of the files from the page, graphics, flash files, java, java script files…  Its all there so you can simply take the file you are looking for.

Note that I have had more success with Firefox than IE in this process, even though I like IE much more.

Enjoy!