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I used to play Google Doodle daily. Can anyone say where can I download Google Doodle? I'd like to play Google Doodle on my home PC offline.

Can anyone suggest to me how to download Google Doodle and use it offline?

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4 Answers

up vote 10 down vote
+25

All the Doodles can be found through the Google Doodles page.

For saving any given doodle, I demonstrate my approach using the same Soccer 2012 doodle as @Synetech. To simplify the manipulation I use both Firefox and IE.

  1. Open the archive page in Firefox
  2. Right-click on the doodle and choose the menu option of This Frame => Show Only This Frame :
    enter image description here
  3. Open IE to the same address as displayed (the Firefox "IE View" extension is useful)
  4. Execute the menu option of File => Save as ... and save in Web Archive (*.mht) format
  5. You will find the entire game saved as a file named London 2012 Soccer.mht that can be played offline in IE by double-clicking it.

I have used IE for saving the page, since the Firefox menu function of Save Page As did not produce a playable game.

(Tested using Firefox 14 and IE9.)

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Ah, you did the same thing. I’m surprised that IE9 even supports MHTs anymore. – Synetech Aug 11 '12 at 23:11
any addons for mozilla earlier versions? – vignesh4303 Aug 12 '12 at 4:16
for earlier versions of i.e vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-internetexplorer-general/… – vignesh4303 Aug 12 '12 at 5:27
@vignesh: If you mean the "IE View" extension, it has been working for me since very early versions of Firefox. – harrymc Aug 12 '12 at 6:04
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@DaveRook, you can just use complete page and have direct access to the files so that you can edit the graphics, script and such. – Synetech Aug 12 '12 at 14:25
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up vote 6 down vote

You can't save it because it's a server script.

As for the actual picture, you can save them from Google Doodle page by right clicking on them and select save image (or similar - depending on the browser).

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What exactly is supposed to be server-side? o.O Technically, all web-content is “server-side” until it is downloaded to the browser. Google’s Active Doodles are HTML5, meaning that they run in the client. – Synetech Aug 11 '12 at 17:46
@Synetech: Google Doodles existed long before HTML5. Most of them are just javascript. – harrymc Aug 11 '12 at 19:40
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Dave: Your answer is only correct for the most simple doodles. However most of them simply will not work without the javascript used to manipulate the image. The image by itself is usually useless. – harrymc Aug 11 '12 at 19:46
... and a doodle is absolutely NOT a server-side script. – harrymc Aug 12 '12 at 6:19
> Google Doodles existed long before HTML5.   @harrymc, not their active doodles. – Synetech Aug 12 '12 at 14:16
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up vote 4 down vote

You can’t download them easily like a downloadable game.

Fortunately, because webpages are pretty much open and exposed, you can download it, but you have to do some manual footwork.

Let’s take the Soccer 2012 doodle as an example:

  1. You’ll see that it is available in the archives at this page
  2. Check it’s source-code and you’ll see that it is in fact an IFrame loaded from a different page
  3. Check the source for that page and you will see the files required to run the doodle such as the background and generic sprites. There are also the scripts and doodle-specific sprites

To simplify the process a little, you can:

  1. Clear your browser’s cache
  2. Open your browser’s cache directory
  3. Load the most specific page (i.e., the one loaded into the IFrame, not the doodle-archive page)
  4. Copy the files from the browser cache
  5. Rename them if necessary

You can also try using a tool like wget, but you will still have to do some work to make sure you get everything and clean up the cruft.

An even easier way may be to simply save the page (save complete page mode). Depending on your browser, it may/should save the HTML file, the auxiliary files (script, graphics, stylesheets, etc.), and adjust the filenames as needed.

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Renaming the files and editing the html to use these downloaded files is a heck of as job. – harrymc Aug 11 '12 at 20:46
It can be, but Google Active Doodles tend not to be too messy (maybe only half-a-dozen files in total for the core game). I added another option that may be easier, depending on the browser in use. – Synetech Aug 11 '12 at 23:10
In my test the Firefox Save Page As didn't correctly save the adjusted html. That's why I think it is too complex to do manually. – harrymc Aug 12 '12 at 6:17
In Chrome (and back when I used IE, IE), it would make a directory with the pages name, but with _files appended and simply change the refs to that directory. – Synetech Aug 12 '12 at 14:15
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It still does - but the game doesn't work. – harrymc Aug 12 '12 at 14:19
up vote 2 down vote

After visiting Google Doodle page you can use any Bulk image downloader to download all the images in that particular page. So that you don't need to right click and save each and every individual doodles.

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I think that since the OP asks for "usage" he wants to download the interactive doodles (as the ones for the Olympics) – Matteo Aug 10 '12 at 5:47
@Matteo i agree with you – vignesh4303 Aug 10 '12 at 9:03
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-1 : Doodles are not only images. – harrymc Aug 11 '12 at 20:54

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