how download outside the browser How to Play Adobe Flash SWF Files Outside Your Web Browser? The .SWF file extension is pronounced as “ Swiff “, is an Adobe Flash File Format . SWF files consist of animations or applets of various levels of interactivity and function. The term “ SWF ” was an abbreviation of ShockWave Flash which was later on changed to the Small Web Format . The SWF file format is basically for Online Use. These files are often used for online Games played within a Web Browser and for this purpose, Adobe makes available plugins, such as Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Integrated Runtime to play SWF files in web browsers on desktop operating systems. These include Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux on the x86 architecture and ARM architecture (Google Chrome OS only). It was quite easy before 2015 to play a local SWF file on your computer; just drag and drop it into a browser window to play it. But despite its popularity and usage Flash has 1000 Plus Vulnerabilities , as a result, Adobe has decided to Retire Flash in late 2020 and all major browser makers announced that they would end support for Flash in 2020 in the browsers as well. When you try to play the SWF file on your desktop PC, you may notice that it is not that easy anymore. Most web browsers Disallow the Dragging and Dropping of such files into their interface for playback; those that allow it right now (in 2019) will stop allowing it once Flash support runs out. One example: when you drag an SWF file onto the Chrome interface you get a Download Prompt and the Flash file is not Played. So , if you have Flash files on your system, you may want to continue using these files even after the retiring of Flash, so, it is necessary to look elsewhere to find a Reliable Option that will work after 2020. However, remember that some SWF files are interactive games whereas others might be non-interactive advertisements or tutorials, so not every SWF file is supported in all SWF players. Playing Adobe Flash SWF Files Outside Your Web Browser. So, you want to play SWF file outside the browser, the first thing that comes in mind is to download Adobe Flash Player. But that Player won’t solve your problem because it will use a browse r to play SWF files; a player that would Play the SWFs Independently is required. Adobe’s products, as well as other SWF creating applications, can open SWF files like Adobe Animate previously known as Adobe Flash , Dreamweaver, Flash Builder, and After Effects. Another feature-filled commercial product that works with SWF files is Scaleform , which is a part of Autodesk Game-ware but it will not be a good idea to install Heavy Software Application just to play Flash but if you have already installed any of these applications use them to play SWF. Different Programs might be required to open Different SWF files. Solution 1: Adobe Flash Player Projector Content Debugger. Searching in this regard will get you to Adobe Flash Player that plays the SWF file in the browser. However, Adobe has indeed such an SWF player that is called Adobe Flash Player Projector Content Debugger or Adobe Standalone Flash Player . Adobe hides the standalone Flash Player very well. Download Adobe Flash Player Projector Content Debugger, go to the following Link Locate for available options of OS like Windows, Mac or Linux And you should now download the Flash Player Projector Content Debugger. Download the Flash Player Projector Content Debugger On Windows , you’ll have an EXE file that needs no installation. Just double-click it to run it. Flash Exe for Windows You’ll get a simple Adobe Flash Player Window . To open an SWF file, either click File > Open or drag and drop it to the window or. You can enter a path to an SWF file on the web or browse to an SWF file on your local system. Opening of Flash File in Flash Player Resize the window to zoom in if the Flash object appears too tiny. Now, you can watch and interact with the SWF file as you usually would. Right-Click the Flash object or use the menu bar to control Standard Options like zoom settings, image quality, and toggling the full-screen mode off and on. Opened Flash Game in Flash Player The best part: This Flash Player will keep working in the future, even after web browsers ax Flash completely. It’s not just a debug tool for developers; it’s an extremely useful compatibility solution for anyone that needs Flash. Solution 2: Use Macromedia archives. Download Flash Player from Macromedia Archives website for Windows 10 and Mac from following links as per your requirement: – Released on 04/10/2018 – Released on 03/13/2018 – Released on 02/06/2018 – Released on 01/09/2018 – Released on 9/9/2014 (Win Firefox and Mac) – Released on 9/9/2014 (Win IE only) – Released on 4/16/2014 (Mac only) Install and use it as a normal application of your OS. Solution 3 : SWF File Player. One of the better options for Windows OS is the freeware SWF File Player . This program is freeware, and it requires the .NET Framework and Shockwave Flash Object. Install the application. It will display a Blank Interface on start and you need to use File > Open to load SWF files. Both compressed and uncompressed SWF files are supported. SWF File Player parses the header of the file and fills out the information on the screen. Hit the play button to start playback. If it is a game, you can start playing, and if is an app, you can start using it right away. You may run into issues if an SWF file needs to download content from the Internet, as it depends on the availability of the server. It should work if the server is still up. Use F11 to toggle full-screen mode. Flash Game in SWF File Player As a Gamer, you may like to check the Flash Games Preservation project Flashpoint as an alternative. This project collects Flash games from the Internet to preserve them; you can download a program from the project website to play these preserved Flash games directly in the program’s interface. The main purpose of this project is to preserve the flash games. Solution 4 : Use Multimedia Players. You can use different multimedia Players to play the SWF file. One example is VLC Media Player which is a free, open-source video player that also supports other media, and it’s especially good when it comes to playing less commonly found formats. VLC Download Link Install and Run VLC Media Player. Right-click the SWF file and choose “ Open with ” or “Open” if there is no program associated with the format and navigate to VLC Media Player from the list of options that appear. Or otherwise Open VLC Media Player, Click on Media and them Click Open File and navigate to the SWF file. GOM Player and Media Player Classic play SWF just fine (MPC is included in the XP Codec Pack). You can try your luck with other Multimedia players. Solution 5 : Use IrfanView for Windows. IrfanView is a compact, fast and innovative free graphic viewer for Windows. Download and install the IrfanView IrfanView Then download and install the Additional Official Plugin for Flash from the following link It can open Flash files up to version 9 Open your SWF file using IrfanView either by drag and drop or from the file menu. Solution 6 : iSwiff for MAC. iSwiff uses Adobe’s Flash web plugin (NPAPI edition) for playing the movies. The Flash plugin was once part of Mac OS X , but you can also find it in the latest version on MacUpdate . Or Download and install iSwiff. Open SWF file from the File menu Or Drag and drop the SWF file onto iSwiff. To use Full Screen choose “ Full Screen ” from the “ Window ” menu. To exit the “full screen” hit Cmd-F . To quit iSwiff just hit Cmd-Q . Select an SWF file in Finder and control-click the file to use “ Get Info “, you can choose iSwiff as the Default Application for all Flash files. There are also other Flash file openers for macOS. SWF & FLV Player and Elmedia Player are two examples, but since they are mainly multimedia players for videos and audio files, you would not be able to use it to play SWF Based Games . Solution 7: Converting SWF Files. You can convert SWF to MP4 or into any other video format. There are the bulk of free video file converters that can save an SWF file to video formats like MP4, MOV, HTML5, and AVI, even some let you convert an SWF file into MP3 or other audio file formats. There are plenty of online tools as well as SWF Authoring Tools you can use to do this. Elemental Se lenium. In a previous tip we stepped through how to download files with Selenium by configuring the browser to download them locally and verifying their file size when done. While this works it requires a custom configuration that is inconsistent from browser to browser. A Solution. Ultimately we shouldn't care if a file was downloaded or not. Instead, we should care that a file can be downloaded. And we can do that by using an HTTP client alongside Selenium in our test. With an HTTP library we can perform a header (or HEAD ) request for the file. Instead of downloading the file we'll receive header information for the file which contains information like the content type and content length (amongst other things). With this information we can easily confirm the file is what we expect without onerous configuration, local disk usage, or lengthy download times (depending on the file size). Let's dig with an example. An Example. To start things off let's pull in our requisite libraries (e.g., selenium-webdriver to drive the browser, rspec/expectations and RSpec::Matchers for our assertions, and rest-client for our HTTP request) and wire up some simple setup , teardown , and run methods. Now we're ready to wire up our test. It's just a simple matter of visiting the page with download links, grabbing a URL from one of them, and performing a HEAD request with it. Once we receive the response we can check it's header for the content_type and content_length to make sure the file is the correct type and not empty. Expected Behavior. If you save this and run it (e.g., ruby download_revisited.rb from the command-line) here is what will will happen: Open the browser Load the page Grab the URL of the first download link Perform a HEAD request against it with an HTTP library Store the response Check the response headers to see that the file type is correct Check the response headers to see that the file is not empty. Outro. Compared to the browser specific configuration with Selenium this is hands-down a leaner, faster, and more maintainable approach. How to install Everhour extension from outside the Chrome Web Store. This article explains how to install the latest Everhour browser extension bypassing Chrome Web Store where it could be outdated. Recently, developers (including us) have encountered a problem that while updating our browser extension, Google might delay a release due to a manual review process for up to several weeks. This workaround allows you to have the most recent and stable version of our browser extension. How to install. Go to Chrome > Preferences > Extensions or type chrome://extensions in your address bar. 2 Remove an existing Everhour extension, if you have one 3 Download this archive - https://everhour.com/addon/chrome/everhour_time_tracker.zip 4 Extract this archive into a local folder (don't delete this folder afterwards) 5 Enable the 'Developer mode' 6. Click 'Load unpacked' and select the downloaded folder. You should see the "Everhour" extension enabled. 8 Please authorize the extension . You can either enter the API key, or just click this link and open your Everhour account. If you logged in, the extension will associate with your account automatically. Can Chrome automatically update extension installed this way? Unfortunately, Chrome would not auto-update the unpacked extension (that is in developer mode). Over time, we recommend that you remove the dev version and install the latest from the official store. Again, this workaround is designed to help you in case of a critical problem, when you cannot wait for an update from the official store. Thanks for the feedback There was a problem submitting your feedback. Please try again later. Javascript trigger download outside of browser. What would be the best way of triggering a download outside of the browser? I have a Html Page which is not on a Server but should only function as a Digital Signage Viewer. The Server (which already exists) sends a playlist over TCP Sockets (the server is a bit older) telling the client what media it needs to download from where and where the media is supposed to be presented. The communication between the Javascript Client code and the Tomcat server is irrelevant for now. What I would like to know is if there is a way to download the files to a certain directory without letting the browser download the file (Problems -> Download Pop Up -> Confirmation -> Can't preset different download folders etc. with Javascript), so that I can set the source of the media tags after they have downloaded ? (If you're asking why I'm not simply streaming the media it's because if the connection is lost the media still needs to continue to play) Without Google Chrome, the Windows Store Will Always Suck. Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek. Read more. Microsoft won’t allow Google Chrome in the Windows Store. Google tried to help users by putting an “installer” for Chrome in the Store instead, but Microsoft quickly tore it down. Microsoft is making the Store worse just to serve their business interests. The Store even allows other apps that use Google Chrome’s “Chromium” browser engine—just not Chrome itself. The Store Is Filled With Garbage, But Won’t Allow Chrome. Search for Google Chrome in the Store and you’ll find everything but Chrome. You’ll see a “Best Browser – Search for Google” app that conveniently has Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer icons to make this sketchy third-party application look like a big, official, trustworthy browser. Microsoft’s Store is full of garbage like this. Just look at this $1.99 app filled with typos clearly trying to confuse and scam VLC media player users. This is the same kind of junk that’s always filled the Windows Store and even pollutes Apple’s Mac App Store, just made a tiny bit more respectable. it’s at least pretending that it doesn’t exist to trick users out of their money, when it clearly does. Microsoft claims that “app certification” only takes a few hours before submitted apps appear in the Store, so clearly they aren’t looking very hard at this stuff. Google was trying to make the Store more useful, allowing Windows users to search the Store for Chrome and find it. Microsoft won’t allow the full Google Chrome browser in the Store, so Google put a little app that was basically a download link there instead. Install the app, and you’d be taken to Google’s website to download Chrome. Sure, geeks wouldn’t need it, but it would help lots of average users find and download Chrome, especially on something like Windows 10 S. Despite the fact that this approach is almost exactly what Microsoft proposed when Windows 8 was released—listing links to desktop apps in the Store so they could be easily found in a trusted place—Microsoft shut Google down. “We welcome Google to build a Microsoft Store browser app compliant with our Microsoft Store policies,” said Microsoft in a statement to The Verge. But Google can’t do that. A “Microsoft Store browser app” would be something completely different from what Google Chrome is, and from what Chrome’s users actually want. Here’s why. Microsoft Allows Apps With Chrome’s Browser Engine, But Not “Web Browsers” Microsoft is allowing a lot of desktop applications in the Store thanks to the Desktop App Converter, also known as Project Centennial. This includes a variety of apps built using Electron, which uses the Chromium browser engine—the same browser engine Google Chrome is built on top of. These apps often access the web, and do it using the same browser engine Chrome uses. In fact, Microsoft actually created a tool that will convert Electron apps to Windows Store apps, keeping the Chromium browser engine in place. But Microsoft’s policies insist that Chrome (and Firefox) are banned from the Windows Store. According to Store policy 10.2.1, “Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate HTML and JavaScript engines provided by the Windows Platform.” This means Google could create a version of Chrome for the Windows Store—but they’d have to rewrite it and use Microsoft Edge’s browser engine, meaning it wouldn’t really be Chrome anymore. It’d be more like the limited Chrome mobile app for an iPad. That’s not what Chrome’s Windows users want—Windows isn’t iOS. Chrome Is Banned to Help Microsoft, Not You. The only reason Chrome isn’t allowed in the Store is because Microsoft says it isn’t. There’s no technical reason for the policies Microsoft are enforcing. Microsoft can cite its policies, but they created those policies and they can change them whenever they want. Security isn’t a good reason to ban Chrome’s browser engine. Google Chrome has an excellent security record, and Microsoft allows that browser engine into the Store via Electron, anyway. (So its policies aren’t even really consistent.) Worse yet, banning Chrome from the Store means that Windows users will have to install the application from the web, putting more inexperienced users at greater risk of downloading malware. Microsoft just wants to push Microsoft Edge and its own services. That’s why they’re insisting Google rewrite Chrome from scratch, basically just building a shell around Microsoft Edge. Chrome has become more of a platform than just a browser, and Microsoft wants you to use their platform and not Google’s. It doesn’t matter what you want. Yes, this is what Google has to do on Apple’s iOS—and that’s why Chrome on iPhone and iPad is so much less interesting. Chrome users want Chromecast support, they want extensions, they want new web features—they want the full Chrome browser. Windows 10 is for powerful PCs, not locked down smartphones and tablets. Even after the failure of Windows 8, Microsoft is still trying to turn Windows into a more limited mobile environment. Microsoft Allows Almost Anything Else in the Store. While the Store was previously just a restricted place where you could get sandboxed universal applications, it now provides powerful desktop apps that can do all kinds of things, thanks to the new Desktop App Converter. Apple and Microsoft are working on putting iTunes in the Store, allowing Windows users to access their media and manage their devices even on Windows 10 S PCs that can’t get software from outside the Store. iTunes bundles various system services, background processes, and hardware drivers that allow it to do that. That’s allowed—so why isn’t Chrome? If Microsoft were actually trying to compete with Apple’s digital music and video store (Groove Music is dead) or mobile devices (Windows Phone is dead), would they block iTunes from the Store, too? Windows 10 S Users Will Have to Pay $50 to Install Google Chrome. Of course, this is Windows, so Google Chrome isn’t banned completely. You can always download it from outside the Store. However, you can only do that on Windows 10 Home and Pro PCs. If you one day buy a PC with Windows 10 S, which comes installed on the new Surface Laptop (as well as some other PCs), you will need to pay $50 to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro just so you can install Google Chrome. The upgrade to Windows 10 Professional is currently free for Windows 10 S users, but Microsoft is set to start charging that $50 upgrade fee after March 31, 2018. Microsoft has to be happy about that. Keeping Google Chrome outside the Store makes the Microsoft Store and Windows 10 S worse, and that will soon make Microsoft some extra money. Either you’re locked into Microsoft’s platform, or you have to pay them an extra $50. Either way, Microsoft wins, and you lose.