Opening .swf files with Firefox on your Mac

I've been asked how to do this a few times by friends and relatives for whom I provide informal tech support, so I'm going to try to document this.

Let's suppose you have a .swf file that you'd like to play locally.

For example, Cyberbee has a lovely .swf file on copyright. (Try this web page. If the copyright classroom experience doesn't play for you in Firefox, then the directions below for playing .swf files locally also won't work.)

If you've downloaded the .swf file locally, or otherwise gotten your hands on a .swf file, you might then want to be able to play that file off of your desktop.

An easy way to play it locally is to open it with Firefox thereby taking advantage of Firefox's ability to play it with the Adobe Flash player.

As a one-off you could open it with Firefox. (Right-click and select "Open With...". Select Firefox as the application with which you'd like to open the .swf file.)

However, it might be more convenient to configure the Finder to always open files of this type with Firefox. You do that like this:

Right-click on the .swf file.
Choose Get Info.
There's an "Open With" section in the Get Info dialog. Expand it.
Choose Firefox as the application with which to open it.
Select "Use this application to open all documents like this."
Close the Get Info dialog.
Double-click on the .swf file, and viola! It should open in Firefox and play.