There seemed to be no way to play Kongregate games offline. Until now.

We’re going to show you how to download Kongregate games and play them locally on your computer.

This tutorial requires Firefox with the Live HTTP Headers addon. Get them before moving on.

Download Kongregate Games

1. Open up Firefox and head over to Kongregate. Click Tools > Live HTTP Headers. In the resulting window, switch to the Generator tab. Check request and uncheck images and CSS on the right  side. Make sure Capture is checked at the bottom.
   
2. Load game you want to download, and watch the Live HTTP Headers window fill with entries. Uncheck Capture when the game starts to load (or you’ll be bogged down with a large number of irrelevant entries). Look for the following pattern:
   

   #request# GET http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/[numbers]/[numbers]/live/[game-name].swf?kongregate_game_version=[numbers]

   For our example, we’re going to use the Little Wheel game. Our entry appeared like this:

   #request# GET http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/0004/8108/live/littlewheel.swf?kongregate_game_version=1244712350

3. Right click and Copy the entry.
   

   Paste it into Firefox, remove #request# GET from the URL, and when the page loads you should be greeted by the Flash game filling the whole window. Hit File > Save Page As and select a location to download. It should save as a swf file.

Playing the Game

Head over to where you saved the Flash game and Open With… > Mozilla Firefox. There are two possible outcomes:

1. The game opens fine and perfectly. You’re at the end of the article. This is the case with Little Wheel.
2. The game opens, but the game doesn’t work or a message displays telling you to go to Kongregate. You’ll need to follow the next part of the tutorial, which requires XAMPP. XAMPP will emulate a web site so we can trick the Flash game into believing it’s operating on Kongregate.com. In the video tutorial below, we’ve used the Fantastic Contraption game, which doesn’t work without this following step.

The Workaround

1. Grab the Self Extracting ZIP Archive from the XAMPP download page. Double-click the extractor, and let it place the files at C: (it’ll create a folder called “xampp” automatically). Don’t be creative with the path, by sticking to a top level folder you skip a step.
2. Head into C:\xampp\htdocs and create a folder called kongregate.com
3. Move the Flash game file (swf) into the newly created folder (C:xampp\htdocs\kongregate.com)
   
4. Run C:\xampp\xampp-control.exe and fire up the Apache server by clicking Start next to where it says Apache. It should say Running once you click it, as seen in the screenshot below
   
5. Direct your browser to http://localhost/kongregate.com/. You’ll be greeted by minimalistic list of files in the directory. Click on the Flash game you put into the folder. If all goes well, it should work perfectly – the game should fill up the Firefox window.

To further clarify the steps above, I’ve prepared a short video tutorial:

That’s it for saving Kongregate games to your computer and playing offline. If you have any questions or aware of any easier way to download Kongregate games, feel free to tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

For more post on flash games, check out:

MUO Games – The Best Websites to Play Flash Games
4 Web Flash Games to Kick-Start your Brain
The Best Online Flash Games
Orisinal.com – Cute Flash Games For All

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(No, camping isn’t that active an affair with me. A little fishing, a little drinking, a little reading. Thank heavens for the 5L Heineken keg)

Usually, I would use HTTrack to download blogs for offline viewing. It’s been around since the 56kbps days and works very well indeed. But HTTrack has been covered on MUO quite well already. So, BackStreet’s back, alright! (Sorry.)

Step 1: Download and Install BackStreet Browser

Here it is, it’s only 1.48MB in size. Quick download, quick install.

Step 2: Set up the Parameters

Parameters is a fancy word for options. I like big multi-syllable words like maramalade and mayonnaise. Click on New to start a new project.

Enter the URL of the site you wish to download, a Title for it, and choose the Folder you want to download the site to. Under the Load tab, you’re going to set how much of the site you want to load. The default values should serve you well. Note that each level of link depth that you add, can add to the size of the download almost exponentially. Three should be plenty.

The File Filter tab is where you determine what types of files you wish to exclude or set size limits on the files. This helps you restrict just how much is downloaded. Let’s say the site has a lot of images that don’t have much to do with the content. You might exclude JPEGs then. Then the site would download quicker and take up less of your hard drive.

Under URL Filter you can choose which protocols you will access. If the site has a protected section you don’t want to access, you might uncheck HTTPS. If the site has an FTP download site, say for free programs, you might want to uncheck that as well, to speed up your download. The Server option can be used to determine where the files are downloaded from. Some sites use server balancing or mirror servers. Choosing Follow other servers would allow for downloads from them. Download pages only from other servers would download strictly from mirrored or associated servers. I’m not sure why you would want to do that. Maybe the main server is down?

Folder options are to limit what folders are canvassed for files. By having it on only Follow only subfolders, the process will take files only within the tree of the first file accessed.

Now the Connection tab. Here you can decide how BackStreet will identify itself to the server. If you don’t want the site administrator going through their stats and seeing their site was downloaded by the BackStreet browser, you can choose one of three other browser types. Here you can also set up a connection through a proxy server, but I’m not sure why you would do that for a legitimate connection.

Others. Good old Others. The catch-all tab for stuff that didn’t have a home elsewhere. Folder Structure is a neat option. I recommend selecting Copy folder structure especially if you are making a back-up of a site for transfer to another server. I don’t see much sense in changing the other values here. But as you use BackStreet more and more, you may want to tweak these values. Once you have everything in place, just click the OK button.

Step 3: Downloading

Here it is downloading! In the bottom frame, you can see what file it is working on. You can also see in the top frame, just how fast it is downloading as well as some other stats. One of the best things about BackStreet is that, if for any reason the download is interrupted, it will simply wait until it can reconnect and keep downloading. Especially useful for very large sites.

There the site is downloaded. By expanding the tree in the left frame, you can see that the directory structure has been kept pretty much intact. Now I have a full local copy of my own blog, should I need to recreate it one day on another server.

Step 4: Viewing the Downloaded Blog

You can view the site within the BackStreet browser, however, it doesn’t work that well where scripts and stylesheets are involved. I prefer to view things in my Firefox browser. Here’s how to do that. Open Firefox, and click on File>Open File.

Now navigate to where the index.html page of the downloaded site is. Choose that file and click the Open button.

Voila! Your downloaded blog is now readable, completely offline.

Wait a minute! It looks crappy! Yes it does. Please keep in mind that most websites today are generated on the fly. Lots of things are put in there dynamically from databases or functions or linked files elsewhere on the web. It isn’t really feasible to download all those things for just one site. Then you would have to set up a web server identical to the one where your site is hosted as well as a database and database connections to properly duplicate the blog.

What matters here is the content. I can read each article on the blog completely and fully, with the majority of the images being in place too. How awesome is that? Moderately awesome, yes. Extremely awesome when it’s raining and you are stuck in a tent with a half-full mini keg of Heineken.

If you were going to download blog for offline reading, which one would it be? What’s you’re favourite off-line browsing tool? Like Heineken? Let’s hear about it in the comments!

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Too Dramatic, was it ?

Well, the reason that I’m being so dramatic is that the feature that Google has released this time is one that I’ve been personally waiting for ages and definitely deserves this attention.

The big deal is that you can now access and use Gmail offline, that is without Internet connection. Obviously, you will not be able to send any emails while you’re offline, but atleast you can read them, and any emails that you send during this time will be queued up and delivered the moment you get back online. Anyway you look at it, this is an incredible feature to have.

To be able to access Gmail account offline, you’ll need to first download and install Google Gears. If you’re using Google’s Chrome browser, though, you can relax since Chrome comes with Gears installed by default.

After you have Gears installed, just go to Settings->Labs and enable the Offline feature.

Gmail should now reload and you will see a new link titled “Offline” right next to the “Settings” link in the top right corner of the Gmail window.

Click on Offline and Google Gears will throw a warning at you that some website named http://mail.google.com is trying to access Gears. Since I was quite sure that it’d harmless, I let the website access Gears and you should probably do the same.

At this point, Gmail will begin downloading what it thinks are the most important emails to you. I’m saying “what it thinks” because the Gmail team has a pretty nifty algorithm to determine the emails that it downloads. For me that figure came to “about 3 years” worth of my emails and you might get a different figure, depending on the amount of email that you get.

At any rate, Gears will download about 10000 of your latest emails, not counting the Trash and Spam folder so this should be enough for most of us.

Depending on the speed of your link, this actual process of downloading and syncing emails might take a while and this is probably a good time to have a cup of coffee (or a mug of beer, if that’s what you prefer).

Gears will also offer to create a shortcut for Gmail on the desktop. With this shortcut, you can login Gmail in offline mode right from your desktop.

The Offline Gmail feature also includes a very cool Flaky Connection Mode. In this mode, you can continue using Gmail as you normally would and Gmail will automatically determine if you are online or offline, without the user ever knowing about it.

If you send any emails in this mode and you’re offline, Gmail will keep them in the outbox and send them as soon as you come back online, and you’ll never even come to know about your connection status. In my opinion, you should always keep this option checked. To enable the flaky connection mode, click on the Offline Gmail icon next to the Settings link.

This is without any doubt, one of the best things to happen to webmail. With our ever increasing dependence on services based “in the cloud”, the Gmail team has taken the lead in letting the users have access to their data, whether they’re connected to the cloud or not. This, in my opinion, can only be a good thing.

Do you think you ever going to use Gmail in offline mode? Let us know what you guys think of this new feature in the comments.

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Here is how to get it working:

If you are not using Adobe AIR already

Go to Get Adobe Air, download it and install it.

If you are already using Adobe AIR

Download GMDesk and run the installer. (Also check out other useful and popular Adobe AIR apps handpicked by MakeUseOf authors here, here and here.)

Now, about GMdesk

GMDesk offers you access to GMail, Google Calendar, Google Documents, Google Maps, Google Reader and Picasa . It also offers the ability to switch between the Google Services via keyboard shortcuts.

You can choose the default Google service that starts up when GMDesk is started. You can set it up for Google Apps access as well.

Other ways to run webapps as desktop apps

Mozilla Prism

Prism is Mozilla’s effort to bring a more desktop-like feel to web applications. (MakeUseOf Article)

Bubbles Site Specific Browser

Bubbles allow you to run web apps as stand alone desktop apps. The solution was my favorite before GMDesk because it offered a more desktop-like feel, with notifications and other similar bells and whistles. However you have to download an extension for the app or service you want to run and not many are available. (MakeUseOf Article)

Google Gears

Gears is intended to help improve the webapps by allowing local searchable databases and javascript running in background. However it can be used to create simple desktop apps without these functionalities as well. (MakeUseOf Article)

Google Chrome

You might have noticed the option to “Create Application Shortcuts…” in Google Chrome. Alright, its there in case you didn’t notice. It also allows you to achieve similar results, that is create a desktop-like feel for your web apps. Chrome achieves this via Google Gears.

Anyways, what’s with running webapps from the desktop?

Apart from the fact that you save some time and typing by just double-clicking the shortcut, or all together using a shortcut key to launch the app there are some other advantages:

• No unnecessary browser toolbars to take up precious space.
• Less distraction and urge to check out the latest xkcd strip or hop over to Facebook (unless you run them from the desktop as well) because there is no awesome bar or omni bar or whatever fancy name they give to the address bar.
• Some applications integrate nicely with the desktop, offering native operating systems like notifications on events, drag and drop etc.
• Improved performance and offline access. (generally with Google Gears )

As you can see there are a number of ways to run Google services (and others) from your desktop. However I really like GMDesk and the idea of grouping Google Reader, Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Maps and Picasa into one window. I use Google services a lot like many people do. Having them all tucked up neatly in a separate window with lesser distractions definitely helps your productivity. Now you don’t have to switch to Firefox only to find out you had Gmail open in Chrome and then switch to Chrome and then look for the tab that houses Gmail.

What particular solution do you use for desktop-like behavior? Or do you prefer leaving it to the browser?

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But imagine that you are marooned on an island with just your rusty laptop….OK, strike out the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ scenario and look at a more realistic setting of being away from a net connection. Get the picture? Here’s where some of the offline tools for Wikipedia browsing come in handy.

The Wikimedia Foundation has set up an offline Wikipedia version themselves understanding this need. The English version with a collection of about 2000 pages can be had in the form of a CD (an ISO file). But it comes at a cost of $13.99.

The penny pinchers among us have to put in a bit more effort and megabytes. But despair not. Here are four free tools for taking the Wikipedia knowledge off the net and into an anytime, anywhere experience.

I. WikiTaxi (OS: Windows)

All downloaded pages are stored in a WikiTaxi database. WikiTaxi uses compression to make sure that the database remains compact enough. For instance, the huge English Wikipedia easily fits on an 8 GB memory stick. WikiTaxi itself does not require an installation as it runs from an executable. The process to download the information is a bit long drawn out as you have to essentially download a XML database dump from the Wikipedia site containing the wiki content (The largest English Wiki is 3.5 GB).

An included WinTaxi importer contains this database into a WinTaxi database for you to browse offline. The database dumps are updated every few weeks. So you need to go online to get the most recent version of the information.

II. Zipedia (OS:Windows)

Zipedia is a Mozilla Add-on for Firefox enabling offline browsing. The Zipedia page describes it as the ‘poor man’s choice’. But when we don’t have access to the real thing, then it’s a worthy choice isn’t it? You will still need to download the Wikipedia database dump. Zipedia does not need any external database as this is done by the browser itself. The add-on works with Firefox v2.0-3.0+. To access the offline resource you need to just type in – wikipedia://wiki/

III. Wikislice (OS: Windows)

Wikislice is an application that allows the user to collate Wikipedia entries based on a particular topic or subtopic. Wikislice as the name suggests gives you a ’slice’ of the information in a downloadable format for easy reading offline. Wikislice comes as a web based tool as well as a desktop interface. To use Wikislice, just type the topic of your interest in the search bar provided and Wikislice will display all the applicable information for you to browse or download.

Here’s how it works -

1. Type in your topic and click ‘Go’.
2. You get the information and related subtopics (for more narrow searches).
3. The Top 50 topics are displayed over 5 pages.
4. Download the Wikislice (part of Wikipedia) offline if the number of pages is less than 2000.
5. The downloaded pages can be used with the Webaroo software. The app will check if you have the software installed on first use. In case you don’t, it will prompt you for the download.

Here’s a simple slideshow from the main site.

IV. Pocket Wikipedia (OS:Windows/ Linux and PocketPC)

Pocket Wikipedia is a carefully compiled handpicked selection of Wikipedia information and comprises of nearly 24,000 images and 14 million words. That’s a stack of fifteen volume encyclopedias (Encyclopedia Britannica has 40 million words and 24,000 images!). All within a 180MB free download in a single zip archive. This software differs from the others in one aspect – you get pictures within the text as in the original version. But remember that it does not contain the entire gamut of Wikipedia; just the more important ones for ready reference.

(Bonus V) How To Get Wikipedia on Your iPod

If you have an iPod and couple of GBs of spare space you can also install Wikipedia right onto it. For more details check out Mark’s excellent guide on How To Install Wikipedia on Your iPod.

Have you used any of these four software apps? If so, which do you prefer? Do you have another that you prefer instead? Or do you prefer accessing Wikipedia via the web?

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Downloading a website can come in handy in many situations. You may want to demonstrate a website to a customer at their house, browse the latest headlines while commuting to work or take your laptop to the wifi-less park to enjoy the weather and read a blog at the same time. Having access to a full website backup gives you a lot more freedom than being limited to a few select pages.

While ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, HTTrack is a standalone application, designed to download whole websites, including media files and outside links. The program is available for Linux and Windows.

HTTrack is said to be an offline browser, which doesn’t seem to make much sense. When I try to browse backed up pages, HTTrack opens Firefox to display the projects there. Correct me if I’m wrong, but apparently it needs a “real” browser. Of course to mirror websites it cannot be offline. So it puzzles me how it can be called an offline browser. Am I missing the point?

Anyway, HTTrack is simple to use although it can become a little tricky when the default settings won’t work. In the first window after starting the program you click ‘next’ to actually open a project. You can simply type into the project name and category fields. In this example I’m backing up the Science frontpage of Digg.

On the Mirroring Mode page pick an action and add the URL of the website you would like to backup. The action depends on what you want to do. For your first project you should pick Download web site(s).

Download web site(s) will download the desired pages with default options.
Download web site(s) + questions will transfer the desired sites with default options, and ask questions if any links are considered as potentially downloadable.
Get individual files will only get the files you specify within options, but will not spider through HTML files.
Download all sites in pages (multiple mirror) will download only the sites linked to from the selected site(s). If you drag & drop your bookmark.html file into the Web Addresses field, this option lets you mirror all your bookmarks.
Test links in pages (bookmark test) will test all indicated links.
* Continue interrupted download should be used to continue a download that was interrupted or aborted.
* Update existing download should be used to update an existing project. The engine will go through the complete structure, checking each downloaded file for any updates on the web site.

Let’s have a look at the options. This is where it gets a little more complicated. HTTrack supports Proxy. Within Scan Rules you can add the files it should include or exclude in its backup. Limits is probably the most important tab because here you define how deep HTTrack will mirror the targeted page and how deep it will go into external links.

If you’re running into issues, for example projects that are aborted immediately, you can try to change your Browser ID or play with the settings in the Spider tab. There is also a great FAQ & Troubleshooting section on the HTTrack homepage that will hopefully solve any issues you may run into.

We’re moving on to the next site which allows a few minor settings, such as the option to shutdown the PC when finished or scheduling the start of the project. Unfortunately, the scheduling option is very basic, although in order to complete a project before you leave for work in the morning it may be sufficient.

Once you hit Finish it will begin saving files. If it doesn’t work, just start over and play with the options. It can take some time and even if certain settings worked perfectly in a previous run, they may not work the next time around. As mentioned before, your best bet is to try again and change the Browser ID or refer to the official FAQ & Troubleshooting.

You can cancel a run anytime. After hitting the button once the program will complete all running processes. If you want to abort the project immediately, just hit the cancel button again. To resume a backup start the project again and pick * Continue interrupted download from the menu on the Mirroring Mode page described previously.

Isn’t it a liberating feeling to be able to take the web – or at least parts of it – anywhere, independent of constantly being connected? Maybe that is taking it a bit too far. At any rate it’s a great option. What do you think?

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The answer is actually quite simple. You plan ahead and take the internet with you. Or at least parts of it. It may not be an efficient way to cater your online cravings, but you may finally catch up on some long due reading and best of all, it’s free.

I have two alternatives for you, and I will start with the smaller solution.

ScrapBook is a Firefox addon that integrates with the Firefox Navigation toolbar. After installing the extension you will also notice buttons in your toolbar and status bar. They look like the favicon icon seen in the screenshot below: a blue book with a white back.

When you come across a page you would like to save, you have multiple options. Go to the ScrapBook menu in the Navigation toolbar and select Capture Page or hit the shortcut [CTRL + SHIFT + L] or right-click into the page and select Capture Page or drag and drop the website’s favicon into the ScrapBook sidebar. You only have to remember one of these, relax.

To capture only parts of a site, select these parts, then right-click and choose Capture Selection from the menu. Similarly you can capture a link or rather what’s behind it. Just right-click on it and choose Capture Link from the menu. Moreover, you can capture frames, files, all tabs, images, and instead of capturing anything, you can just bookmark a site with ScrapBook. Easy.

Per default, captured pages or selections are saved in the ScrapBook extension folder located in your Firefox profile directory. This can be changed via the options menu of the extension. In the Organize tab you can even enable a function called Multi-ScrapBook and you can then store data in multiple locations and switch between them using the ScrapBook toolbar button.

Coolness doesn’t stop there. Besides saving a whole site you can edit the page before you capture it. This is actually the greatest part of it! You can remove any part of the page using the DOM eraser, you can add comments, highlight text or add stickies and inline annotations. It’s all done through a small menu bar at the bottom of your screen. The bar comes up when you click the ScrapBook icon that sits in the status bar and select Edit Before Capture.

To best access your captured pages, click the ScrapBook icon in your toolbar which will open the ScrapBook sidebar. You can also go through the Navigation Toolbar menu or click [ALT + K]. The sidebar looks much like your Bookmarks sidebar and you can organize it just as easily. Add folders, drag and drop items or search your collection. Click the word Tools in the top right corner of the sidebar to gain access to even more functions, like import/export, sorting, the combine wizard and more.

This extension may seem simple at first, but it’s ingenious and when you dive in to discover all its features and little details, you may well be overwhelmed at first. This is a great tool to organize online research material, perfect for writers or anyone saving bits and pieces of information. The only thing it’s missing is the ability to automatically capture more than just the active page or a list of predefined URLs.

And that’s why I dare you to stay tuned for part 2 of this mini-series. In the next part I will introduce you to a tool that can do just that: save whole websites, including sub-sites, links and everything. Excited yet?

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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