Compressed/Zipped Files

Archived/Packed & Compressed/Zipped Files

Some files are compressed in order to make them smaller and thus take up less room on the host system and faster to transfer. These can be unzipped or uncompressed with utilities such as winzip. "Stuff it" is the Mac alternative. Some files are archived or packed so that related files can all be kept inside one other file. Sometimes such files are created as a self-extracting executable file, which will unpack itself. This is typically the case with the downloadable versions of Netscape. Sometimes you will need to use specific utilities to unpack the files such as pkunpak.

If you do not already have decompression software, download it...

To be able to download programs, files, etc. from various places on the Internet, you'll need to use a program like Winzip^©. You need to un-zip those files to get at them. You will also be able to zip up your own files to send to someone else, or put up on your website for other people to download.

There are several brands of zip/unzip programs, this tutorial uses screen shots using Winzip version 7 (the current version works the same way!).

Why are are files zipped up?

Because files often get corrupted when they are transferred "loose" over internet lines. Zipped files are within a "container" that protects those files during transmission / downloading.
The file sizes can be compressed (made smaller) providing shorter downloading/transferring time.
If you have a group of files in a specific directory structure, this can be maintained in a single zip file and recreated easily on another computer, when the zip file is unpacked.

You can also use a zipping-up program to zip your own files and send as attachments to email, or upload to a website and offer them (via a link) for others to download and save to their computer. To do that, upload your zipped file to your webhost, and place a link on your page that looks like this. As an example, the HTML code you would put on your web page to download a zipped, October newsletter (or e-zine), zip file name of "zipfile.zip" file would be:

<a href="http://telematics.ashwarp.com/download/zipfile.zip">Download Newsletter</a>

WinZip Tutorial...

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Christopher Ward London Limited