ZipGenius is a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

file archiver In computing, a file archiver is utility software that combines computer file, files into a single archive file or in less common cases, multiple files. A minimally designed archiver might concatenate the content of files along with file file n ...

developed by The ZipGenius Team for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It is capable of handling nearly two dozen file formats, including all the most common formats, as well as password-protect archives and work directly with

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be Write once read many, written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) ...

/RW drives. It is presented in two editions: standard and suite. While the suite edition includes optional modules of the ZipGenius project (oriented to experts and power-users), the standard setup package simply includes the main ZipGenius application. ZipGenius was first released as Mr. Zip 98 to a strict group of users, and renamed ZipGenius in March 1998. In April 1999, its first public release was made. ZipGenius's latest release is version 6.3.2.3112 (), containing many fixes, the majority of which are bug fixes not visible at first glance.

Features

ZipGenius features include: support for TWAIN devices (scanners and digital cameras), file extraction to CD/

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

burner (only under

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

), an

FTP client The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other dev ...

(FTPGenius), and ZGAlbum. ZGAlbum allows users to create slideshows with pictures, which can be loaded from a folder or imported through a TWAIN device. ZipGenius also fully integrates with

Windows Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user i ...

shell. User interface and functions have been placed in multiple locations. Program functions can be accessed either from a menu of buttons on the main toolbar, or from a drop-down menu. They can be customized to suit user preferences. ZipGenius 6 is capable of opening a variety of formats commonly used with

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, such as RPM, TAR, TAR.GZ, TGZ, GZ and 7Z. As regards data security, the archive history file is encrypted, the most recently used files list can be enabled (always or per-session) or disabled, and CryptoZip 2.1 gives encryption algorithms to lock user archives. Users can create self-locking/self-erasing archives and can choose to encrypt files with one of four algorithms (CZIP, Blowfish, Twofish, Rijndael AES). Also, CZIP files no longer depends on ZipGenius because users can create executable CZIP (.EXE) files which will allow the user to send encrypted archives to people who do not use ZipGenius. ZipGenius is hosted at zipgenius.it, but in 2008 the WinInizio Software team put zipgenius.com online to offer an international website for users not speaking Italian. On July 1, 2009, website ZipGenius.it has been totally redesigned upon the MODx web application. On July 6, 2009, ZipGenius 6.1.0.1010 was released to the public. Current release is 6.3.2.3116 since February 1, 2017. Release 6.3.2.3117 is set to be published during summer 2020 and it will be the last release in the 6.x series because the Project ZipGenius X development has started and the first application, '
CZIP X
'', has been released. Later in 2020, the main ZipGenius X app will be released.

File formats

ZipGenius is able to handle the open source UPX executable compressor, which is used to compress ZipGenius main executable. If UPX.exe is in ZipGenius program folder, users will get an extra compression level while creating new ZIP archives: Brutal+UPX. Many executable files (EXE, DLL, OCX) are distributed as they are after code compilation, so they may have a larger size than necessary. ZipGenius supports the

7-Zip 7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. 7-Zip has its own Archive file, archive forma ...

compression format, conceived by Igor Pavlov, which can compress files more than standard ZIP or RAR compression formats. ZipGenius supports

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

StarOffice StarOffice is a discontinued proprietary software, proprietary office suite. Its source code continues today in derived open-source office suites Collabora Online and LibreOffice. StarOffice supported the OpenOffice.org XML file format, as well ...

documents. OpenOffice.org applications produce their own files in a special format: they are .ZIP archives with a custom file extension containing some XML files, which OpenOffice.org programs merge to rebuild the original documents. ZipGenius complies with this feature, and allows users to manage those files as if they were common ZIP files. In addition, users can optimize them: OpenOffice.org does not use the maximum compression level available for .ZIP format, but ZipGenius does. When users optimize an OpenOffice.org document with ZipGenius, the gain is from 5 to 10 KB of size reduction (depending by the content of the OpenOffice.org file) because ZipGenius will recompress the document with the "Brutal" compression level.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zipgenius Windows compression software File archivers

Features

File formats

See also

References

External links