Zip Behavior on Windows

[Paul D. DeRocco]

> From: Sivakatirswami
> 
> 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?

A self-extracting archive is a small executable with a ZIP appended to it so that when run, it extracts itself. This technique has been around pretty much since the dawn of PKZIP for MS-DOS.

Also, WinZIP is a third-party app. Modern versions of Windows have ZIP support built-in, but it has the same limitation in that you have to do more than just double-click it to extract it. However, you can right-click it and select "Extract All", which isn't too much harder. I don't know if WinZIP includes the ability to create self-extracting archives, but I expect there are some freeware programs that do that.

Installers are nice because they do other things. On Windows, they may create desktop icons, Start Menu items, Quick Launch icons, file type associations, and other registry entries, not to mention cleaning up any previous versions. If you don't need any of that, a self-extracting archive will be sufficient.

-- 

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco at ix.netcom.com