JibJab: Get New Political Video On Your Mac. Free.

I’m not sure where I read about this little killer tip, but it’s been very helpful. Safari has a Window called Activity. Click “Window”, then click “Activity.

That opens a resizeable window which you can move around on the screen. Inside the window is a list of all the files that are opened for each web page window open in Safari. Double-click on a .gif or .jpg image to see what happens.

The double-click should open a new window with the image inside.

Now, hold down the Mac’s “option” key and double-click. The same file (image or whatever) is downloaded to your Mac’s desktop. Ahhhhh. Now some possibilities open up.

Windows users have had utilities that can save Flash .swf animation files. The utilities range from $10 to $30. With Safari, the same capability is built in. Free.

Take Safari to a page with some Flash animation. In the activity window for that web page you should see a file name that ends with .swf. Double click the file name and the Flash animation will open in a new Safari window.

Are you having fun yet?

Jay Leno’s Tonight Show introduced the latest JibJab political parody, “Good To Be In DC.” All the usual characters are there from the original parody; Bush, Cheney, Kerry, Edwards, McCain, Clinton, and many more.

Get Started
If you click over to the JibJab web site you’ll be able to view the Flash animations of the newest and the original parodies. Click Here to open a window with JibJab.

The Jib Jab home page now features both the original “This Land” Flash animation parody, and the newest, “Good To Be In DC” (sung to the tune of ‘Good To Be in Dixie’).

JibJab’s an American company all the way. Own both the JibJab parodies on DVD for just $9.95, or download each for just $2.99, or use Safari to download them to your Mac. For FREE.

Here’s the step-by-step.

Step 1
It’s easier if you have only one Safari window open (the Activity window can get cluttered when many Safari browser windows are open). Click Here to open JibJab.com.

Step 2
Now, in Safari, click Window and select Activity. What you’ll see in the Activity window is all the files that make up the JibJab web site home page.

On the JibJab web site home page you’ll see two promo boxes. One is for “Good To Be In DC” and the other is for the original “This Land.” Click on either one.

That gives you a pop up window and the JibJab Flash animation will begin to load, and then play. If you noticed, there were also some changes inside Safari’s Activity window. The JibJab web site has about a dozen files. Some .jpg files, two Flash .swf files, and so on.

Once you opened one of the JibJab animations, that .swf file was added to Safari’s Activity window. It’s called “this_land.swf” and is about 3.9 megabytes in size. Look for a long text string that starts with “http://images2.shockwave.com/afassets/flash…”.

Step 3
Click on the file name, hold down the Option key and double click. The file should begin downloading. Repeat for the other JibJab file.

It’s that easy. You can use this technique to download nearly any .swf Shockwave/Flash animation from a web site and save the file to your hard drive.

The real trick is to find the file in the Activity viewer window. Sometimes a web page will have what appears to be a hundred files; .css, .gif, .jpg, .js and many, many others.

Simply double-clicking the .swf Shockwave Flash animation file will open it in another Safari window. However, it opens it full size, so it could own your screen’s real estate rather quickly.

Looks cool, though.

Give it a try. The JibJab parodies are hilarious spoofs of life in Washington with the whole crowd of villains (are politicians ever really heroes when they become politicians?); Bush, Kerry, Cheney, Edwards, Kennedy, Clinton, McCain and many more.

Enjoy.