WinZip

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WinZip
Image:WinZip icon.png
WinZip 8.1 SR1 under Windows 2000
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

Image:Winzip-logo.png

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 began life 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 at least 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. Version 10.0 did away with this upgrade scheme.

In May 2006, Corel Corporation, known for its WordPerfect and CorelDRAW product lines, announced that it had completed acquisition of WinZip Computing.<ref>Corel Corporation Acquires WinZip Computing</ref>

1 Features
2 See also
3 External links
4 Notes

[edit] Features

Creation, addition, extraction from ZIP archives.
Configurable Windows Shell integration.
Starting with WinZip 9.0, 128- and 256-bit key AES encryption.<ref>FIPS PUB 197: The Advanced Encryption StandardPDF (272.9 KiB)</ref> 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.<ref>See Brian Gladman's AES code page and the official list of validated AES implementations</ref>
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.
Starting with version 10.0, 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).
Starting with version 11.0, 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