Robert's blog

After three years my website was starting to look a bit outdated. The stripy background pattern looked nice in 2006, but that was a looong time ago. I can't see it anymore; and I have to see it every day.

The content management system on which it was based was Drupal 4.6, the current version is 6.12. Oops, I really missed a lot of updates, but although I am a software geek, I sometimes keep to the old wisdom "never touch a running system". So, I finally decided it was time for an upgrade, and since that also meant recoding the complete layout, I made a few changes here and there. There will be more changes in the next few days, especially to the Screenshots and Documentation pages.

If you find anything not working correctly, please let me know. Thanks!

I have finally added a feature I have wanted for a long time now: concatenation of split files. BetterZip is now able to put 001, 002, ... files together that are not compressed with one of the supported archive formats.

I have also added the Russian localization by Alexandr Slavyshensky. That makes eight fully supported languages now. International! Thank you, Alexandr!

There are also a few bugs from version 1.8 that needed to be fixed. 1.8 had a lot of big changes after all. Find the details in the version history.

Please download the new version here.

Many times over the last months I received e-mails from users requesting that BetterZip should be able to move archives to the trash once they have been extracted successfully.
Many others complained that BetterZip should not pop the Finder in your face after extracting an archive. For all of you, here's a little screenshot from the new preferences window:

Furthermore, XAR archives (the format of the new Leopard installer packages) are now first-class citizens in BetterZip, i.e., you can open, extract, and create XAR archives.

He Yunxuan created a Chinese translation which is also included with the new version.

There are many bug fixes and smaller enhancements in the new version as well. Find all the details in the version history.

I have just released BetterZip version 1.7.3. I fixed a few bugs, tweaked the speed here and there, and added a CRC-32 column to the file list. These are checksums that are used to test the integrity of the extracted files. Some users can actually identify their files using these codes and asked me to add it to the list. If you want to see these codes, you need to check the corresponding option in the preferences window, tab "Columns".

One other change: I have removed the dialogue that told you that some temporary folders were left behind after BetterZip quit the last time. Normally, you would just click the "remove all"-button and move on to the task at hand. In some rare situations a user might have wanted to review the contents of these folders, but for everyone else this was just a nuisance. Starting with this version, BetterZip silently puts these temp folders in the trash. If you want to review their contents, check the trash.

Like with every release, please review the version history for all the details.

For the third year Seth Dillingham is auctioning bundles of Mac software. Every dollar raised through these auctions will be donated to the Pan-Mass Challenge, which directly supports the Jimmy Fund, for the research and treatment of cancer at Dana-Farber.

This year you can put together your own bundle and negotiate its price with Seth. Be generous, yes?

I have donated a few copies for this great cause. So, why not go and buy your license for BetterZip and a huge number of other great software from Seth.