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WinZip
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WinZip | |
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|---|---|
 WinZip 11 Pro build 7313 under Windows XP |
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| Maintainer: | WinZip Computing, Inc. |
| Stable release: | 11.0 Build 7313 (November 15, 2006) [+/-] |
| Preview release: | [+/-] |
| OS: | Windows |
| Use: | File archiver |
| License: | Proprietary |
| Website: | www.winzip.com |
WinZip is a file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, developed by WinZip Computing (formerly Nico Mak Computing). It natively uses the PKZIP format but also has various levels of support for other archive formats.
WinZip was created in the early 1990s as a shareware GUI front-end for PKZIP. Sometime around 1996 the creators of WinZip incorporated compression code from the Info-ZIP project, thus eliminating the need for the PKZIP executable to be present.
From version 6.0 until version 9.0, registered users could download the newest versions of the software, enter their original registration information, and thereby obtain a free upgrade. As of version 10.0 this upgrade scheme was discontinued.[citation needed] WinZip is available in standard and professional versions.
In May 2006, Corel Corporation, known for its WordPerfect and CorelDRAW product lines, announced that it had completed acquisition of WinZip Computing.[1]
Contents |
WinZip is a compression program for Windows. You use it for .zip files, or to make them.
- Creation, addition, extraction from ZIP archives.
- Configurable Windows Shell integration.
- 128- and 256-bit key AES encryption.[2] This has replaced the less secure PKZIP 2.0 encryption method used in earlier versions. The implementation, using Brian Gladman's code, was FIPS-197 certified, on March 27, 2003.[3]
Version 9 also implemented a 64-bit version of the PKZIP file format, eliminating both the maximum limit of 65,535 members for single archive and the 4-gigabyte size limit on either the archive and each member file. - Support of the bzip2 and the PPMd compression algorithms, allowing smaller archives at the cost of a potential increase in compression and extraction times (especially when using PPMd).
- Decompression of .bz2 and .rar files, and special algorithm for audio files (based on WavPack).
- Support for ARC, ARJ, LHA archives if suitable external programs are installed.
- Direct write of ZIP archives to CD/DVD
- Automation of backup jobs
- Integrated FTP upload
- Email ZIP archives
- WinZip does not support Unicode characters in the filename. Attempting to add these files to an archive results in the error message "Warning: Could not open for reading: ..."
The ZIP file archive format (PKZIP) was originally invented for DOS in 1989 by Phil Katz and his company PKWare[4].
Yet due to the fact that PKWare did not protect the name and algorithm of the process by a patent, and since PKWare was slow to realize that the Windows OS (operating system) would eventually dominate the OS market, WinZip Computing Inc. eventually seized the opportunity and released the known WinZip application for Windows.
- ^ Corel Corporation Acquires WinZip Computing
- ^ FIPS PUB 197: The Advanced Encryption StandardPDF (272 KiB)
- ^ See Brian Gladman's AES code page and the official list of validated AES implementations
- ^ Computing Encyclopedia - Article about WinZip
- WinZip home page
- MaximumCompression.com, compression software benchmarks and comparisons