Do you REALLY Have to Unzip Files?

Why can't you run some of the files inside a ZIP folder directly?

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[QuinnBarnett]

are you sure this video wasn't made in 2017

[RyanMercer]

I finally paid for winrar two years ago. Felt weird.

[controlfreak]

Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer invented the zip feature to Windows Explorer. He sold it as a shareware program when Microsoft contacted him to buy it. The Microsoft person that contacted him was unaware that he worked under Dave Custler's Windows NT dev team. I believe they came to an agreement. Dave also created task manager as a side project.

[onelungg]

here is a mindblower tip for designers and everyone else. if you ever receive a pptx file and you want to extract all pictures from it for your more prettier presentation in InDesign or whatever - replace .pptx extension with .zip... extract and voilà

[davidfrischknecht]

One of the first things I do after installing Windows and Firefox is installing 7-Zip and making it the default program for all formats it supports.

[KenLord]

People who never had to span a zip file across a stack of floppy disks ... will never know the struggle.

[ChristopherBurtraw]

I think Dave Plummer (Dave's Garage) did a video discussing implementing this function within the shell

[G_isforgrant]

Linus windows wallpaper never fails to make me laugh

[creounity]

docx is a zip, too. if you rename the extension, you'll be able to open it and view all the "guts" inside 🙂

[YeaSeb.]

There are compressed formats like dwarfs that let you mount them as filesystems so you can access all data without the need for decompressing single files out of the compressed one. It runs the decompression at runtime meaning you can run a whole game directly from a .dwarfs file.

[CompleteAnimation]

I still haven't purchased a copy of WinRAR

[ChippTheFox]

I'm actually surprised you guys didn't cover "zip bombs" or "Zipper bombs". Where people upload rarfiles that are "what you were hoping to download" only to find that after a few seconds when you uncompress it, your entire pc crashs and whatever disk you unzipped too is now permanently locked because the person who made the zip filled it and compressed it with more data than your HDD or ssd could handle.

Now I know this has been fixed depending on your version of windows.

But that's just it, it depends on your version of windows. Afaik this still works on everything from OG windows to windows 10.

[wafkt]

I’m a college professor, and I’m shocked at how many students today don’t understand what a zip folder is or what to do with it.

[seahawk]

* _7-Zip crew have entered the chat_ *

[lefthornet]

7-zip people, please... Is faster than WinRar, Free and opensource...

[AnthonyDFHogan]

Of note, is that Microsoft Office documents these days are ZIP files, with their embedded elements like graphics etc. being represented by separate files within the ZIP, and XML files tying it all together. This is soooo much nicer than the old way of doing things which involved OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) formats which basically involved serialising objects to disk from memory. It's one of the reasons why Outlook PST and MSG files are only fully supported by Outlook on Windows, and why Microsoft desperately wants to get away from them.

[PlayMilesPlay]

Macs just unload the contents into a folder when you open the zip file. It’s like, “Look, we know these files will be extracted anyway, so let’s skip that preview step completely.” I find that convenient.

[marcfuchs]

As someone who has a large databank of personal files of various formats, it makes sense to compress all that stuff with ZIP/RAR to the highest available level. Talking about data you just store and don't access so often. Part of my databank are programs, that I never want to miss. And you can make them so much smaller by compressing - and many of them just install out of the RAR folder fine.
Where it also pays off big time, is Photoshop files. Highly depending on the contents, some Photoshop files can be 90% smaller when compressed. When colorful high-res photos are part of those PSDs, expect less compression, but when it's a lot about forms and layers, much of that can be compressed.

[CandyGramForMongo_]

Phil Katz. There’s a sad story. He’s the PK of PKZIP, inventor of Zip format.

[taylorwoolston]

Nice to see Linus returning to Techquickie.