NWA-PCUG 07/99 NewsLetter Article 18861 N. Hwy 112, Springdale, AR 72762-9303 WINZIP 7.0 By Jim Gaffney, SWIPCC President From 12/98 Throughput, the Journal of the SouthWest International Personal Computer Club. e-mail: editor@swipcc.org Copyright 1998 by the SouthWest International Personal Computer Club (SWIPCC). All rights reserved. Permission to reprint this article is granted to other non-profit computer user groups for non-commercial use, provided credit is given to the author, SWIPCC THROUGHPUT, and one copy of the publication containing the reprinted article is sent to SWIPCC's Newsletter Editor. New Features, Same Great Product It was in April of 1997 (has it really been that long?) that I reviewed for this chronicle NikoMak's Computing's WinZip archive management utility and recommended that it become a part of your standard windows tool set. Since that date, I have found no better or simpler tool to accomplish the job. WinZip gets the job done with minimum effort and via a very intuitive user interface. In October of this year, NikoMak released WinZip 7.0. True to past performance, the new release incorporates some significant and nifty features. In spite of the capability to use filenames of up to 255 characters in Windows 95/98, zip file creators frequently eschew the facility out of habit and use a semi-meaningless 8-character filename. As you will recall, ZIP files on computer Bulletin Board systems commonly contain a comment file that allows for a description of what the contents of the file are supposed to do. WinZip 7.0 has the capability to both display and create those comments. I have been busily engaged in adding comments to many of the ZIP files in my archive libraries so that I can recall why I downloaded something in the first place - while maintaining the author's assigned filename so that I don't create duplicate files. WinZip has always supported not only ZIP but also a wide variety of archive formats including ZIP, LZH, ARJ, ARC, TAR, Z, GZ, UUCODE, BINHEX and MIME. Version 7.0 now adds Microsoft's propriety CAB file to the mix. No longer do I need to keep the "CABVIEW" utility on my system to unearth the contents of CAB files - WinZip does that job too. And before you ask - no, you can't comments to CAB files. It is not a problem with WinZip, but rather that the archive design specification does not provide for comments (complain to Microsoft, not NikoMak). Are you one to hardcopy lists to tweak you memory? WinZip 7.0 provides a print facility for the information listed in the main WinZip window. And speaking of that window, its columns are now resizable and selectable - you can configure the display to turn any of the columns on and off. Clicking on the header for a column (name, modification date, size, compression ratio, path, etc.) sorts by the data in that column. Click it again and the sort order is reversed. NikoMak has even thoughtfully provided an indicator arrow to show on which column the information is sorted and in which order (up/down). The overall feeling is much like using spreadsheet - you can hide columns, drag-and-drop rearrange them and sort on them. The toolbar is, of course, also configurable. Twenty-one (21) buttons are available for the user to customize the interface. Use of the toolbar requires version 4.71 of later of the Windows Common Control library. If you are using Windows 98 or Internet Explorer 4.0 - you already have the library. If you use neither of them, the library is available from Microsoft as a separate download. Do you frequently download archive files from the Internet and then worry that they might contain a virus? WinZip will interface with most major virus scanner packages - including McAfee and Norton Anti-Virus - to check out archive member files before you extract them. Included, as part of the package, is WINZIP Self-Extractor personal edition. If you have need to provide an archive to an associate who is not "ZIP literate", you can send them an executable file which will automatically extract member files when it is run. Better yet, if your file is too large to fit on a single floppy disk (or other removable media), WINZIP Self-Extractor will even "chunk up" your large file onto multiple disks. To help you learn how to use WINZIP, the program Help menu provides a tutorial to get you started. There are also "Tips of the Day" which may optionally be displayed every time you start the program or may be accessed via the program help menu. Learning the program is not difficult; the user interface is extremely intuitive. But don't take my word for it; try the program for yourself by downloading the evaluation version from http://www.WinZip.com. My bet is that you'll soon be registering the shareware for a very reasonable $29. I did several years ago when the version number was somewhere in the 5's. Since then I've been enjoying the product and getting free upgrades. Great product, great support.