Unzipping with WinZip

You'll find almost all files you download, apart from a few tiddlers, are zipped. ZIP is a type of compression, and zipped files are compressed to make them smaller and hence faster to download. As online time is expensive, the faster you can download files the better.

As well as making files smaller, zipping has other benefits including:

• Archiving. Software authors can ZIP many files together into one ZIP archive. Thus, instead of making multiple downloads, you can grab a complete program in one hit.
• Automatic extraction and installation. Authors can create self-extracting ZIP files (these have the extension EXE instead of the traditional ZIP extension), which will extract into designated directories and automatically launch an installation program.

Our long-time favourite decompression program at PC User is WinZip, although there are other excellent programs available, including PKZip. We've included both these programs on this month's CD-ROM, as well as the WinZip Browser Support Add-On. This latter program automates downloading and decompressing files with Netscape, Internet Explorer and various other browsers.

If you want to unzip files manually using WinZip, simply double-click the ZIP file and a WinZip window will open, showing you the zipped file's contents. Click the Extract button, choose a folder where you want the uncompressed files to be stored, then click Extract.

Remember, ZIP archives may contain many files. It's thus a good idea to extract your files to an empty or new folder. That way you won't end up with unmanageable clutter. If you type a new folder name in the Extract To box during extraction, WinZip will create the new folder for you on-the-fly.

You should also watch out for self-extracting ZIP files (with an EXE extension instead of a ZIP extension). These files extract themselves automatically as soon as you open them, and it's very easy to end up with a Desktop full of files if you're not careful.

If you install the WinZip Browser Support Add-On, part of the download/extraction cycle will be managed for you. With the add-on installed, when you download a file it will be automatically saved to the default download folder (usually C:\DOWNLOAD, but you can choose another if you wish) and, once downloaded, the ZIP file will be automatically opened. You'll then need to extract the files as usual.

By the way, if you can't see the file extensions (such as EXE and ZIP) you can display them by:

1. Opening any folder and choosing Options from the View Menu to display the Folder Options dialogue box.
2. Clicking the View Tab and unchecking the Hide MS-DOS File Extensions For File Types That Are Registered option.
3. Clicking OK and closing the folder window.