Zip Behavior on Windows

Sivakatirswami katir at hindu.org
Fri Apr 16 00:19:33 EDT 2010


I regularly ship apps to some users by simply packaging it as a zip 
file. Mainstack, engine components all in a folder, right click, 
compress ship...

  On the Mac the user double clicks and a folder pops up, neatly 
extracted, all components inside next to the main stack and engine.

Now something has changed on windows. if the user double clicks on the 
zip file WinZip is exposing the contents of the package in still 
compressed form. Naive users are baffled. If they unzip the .exe file 
they see in there, it still doesn' work.

I left a query at the winzip site and got a nice prompt response saying 
"It has always been like this" (why are we only now getting problem 
reports then?)   that was 2 pages long! Ouch.

I could ferret out that we now should be making a "self-extracting 
archive."  I don't know if that is still a zip file or not.

Of course some will say "your really should be using a windows 
installer..." but, does it need to be that complicated?

Sivakatirswami




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