Version 2.2.1 (2012-03-22) - Download (for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
Enhancements:
- Allow merging of folders and “keeping both” when adding items that already exist in the archive.
- The “Open With” menu is sorted and displays better results now.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a possible crash when deleting an archive in the Finder while it was visible in the favorites sidebar.
- Fixed a possible crash when using the “open with” menu with unknown file types.
- The percentage badge on the BetterZip icon in LaunchPad could get stuck.
- In some cases BetterZip was not able to track moved or deleted archives.
Version 2.2 (2012-02-28, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
New Features
- Added “Open with” to the contextual menu and changed the View toolbar button to a drop-down button with “Open with” functionality.
- You can now specify a custom file extension in save presets.
- Added a menu item to extract all archives in a folder recursively.
- Added an option and menu item to compress each of multiple dropped items into an individual archive.
- Added Japanese (by Koichi Matsumoto) and Polish (by Mariusz Nicpoń) localizations. Thank you, guys!
- Added the Greenwich localization framework by Whitney Young, FadingRed LLC to allow super easy translation into new languages. Start BetterZip, hold down the Alt/Option key and drop down the Help menu. There’s a new menu item “Translate BetterZip” that will open the translation interface.
Enhancements:
- Increased extraction speed for rar files.
- BetterZip will now display exactly which part of a multi-volume rar archive is missing, if any.
- In the save panel the standard file extension will be appended to the filename.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a possible crash when quitting BetterZip with the favorites sidebar opened.
- Fixed a few errors in the Russian translation.
- The registration window could lead to an infinite loop under certain circumstances.
- Growl will no longer write a warning message to the log.
- Fixed a bug that could lead to files being overwritten when extracting certain tar.gz archives.
Version 2.1.2 (2011-11-18, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
New Features
- Added a Russian localization.
Enhancements
- Hold down the Cmd key while dropping a folder in the queue window to recursively extract all archives in it.
- Hold down the Alt key while dropping an archive in the queue window to force compression.
Bug Fixes
- When starting BetterZip through one of the services in the Services menu, no empty archive window will be opened.
- Fixed a possible crash when quitting BetterZip with the favorites sidebar opened.
- The registration window could lead to an inifinite loop under certain circumstances.
- The split size for 7z archives was limited to 4GB.
- Fixed a bug in handling "additional options" when creating archives.
- Using the option “show save panel” together with the queue could lock up BetterZip.
- Trailing numbers are no longer cut off from the filename when saving with automatically created archive names.
- Fixed "reuse passwords for subsequent archives" in queue.
Version 2.1.1 (2011-10-01, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
Bug Fixes
- Split size is now base 10 (1MB = 1,000,000 Bytes) like the rest of the application.
- Search field was invisible on Mac OS X 10.6 under certain conditions.
- The English help was replaced by the French help.
- Fixed the update mechanism. It will work again from now on.
- Fixed a possible crash when creating previews.
- Extracting all archives in a folder didn't work under certain conditions.
- Some strings were not correctly translated in the French localization.
Version 2.1 (2011-09-20, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
New Features
- Using the service "Extract with BetterZip" you can now extract all archives in a folder hierarchy.
- If files are selected in the archive window, presets now only extract those instead of all files. Hold down Shift to extract all anyway.
- Enhanced "replace existing files" dialog: it now allows to merge extracted items into existing folders, keep both versions or replace the existing version with the one from the archive.
Enhancements
- Enhanced accessibility.
- Improved SIT file handling.
- The favorites sidebar is now populated in the background and there is no longer a delay when starting BetterZip.
- Re-added "Terminate after last window closed" option.
- Enabled the additional parameters field for tar archives.
- Holding down the option key now shows a save panel even for services or direct extraction.
- The location preset in the save panel is now by default next to original/archive.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed two bugs that could lead to a crash.
- BetterZip now uses the original encryption method when resaving an archive, i.e., header encryption will be retained.
- Splitting 7z archives was off by a factor 1024.
- The Save toolbar button wasn't correctly initialized with the default preset.
- Cancelling archive creation through a service in the save panel no longer displays a confusing message.
- Moving or deleting the external rar program could lead to a crash when saving with a preset with rar format.
- The progress bar no longer gets stuck when hiding BetterZip while extracting large archive.
- Extracting an archive via context menu while the same archive was open in BZ could crash BetterZip.
- Fixed a problem with extracting read-only folders in archives.
Version 2.0.2 (2011-07-04, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
New Features
- Added an option to suppress the creation of folders for extracted archives (in extract presets).
Enhancements
- The queue window is now closed upon completion of all operations, if it was opened automatically.
- Enhanced Lion compatibility.
- Removed option "quit after last window closed". If BetterZip is started as a service, it will always quit when finished. If started in normal window mode, it will never quit automatically.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed crash when using BetterZip as a service.
- Closing windows with unsaved changes now works correctly.
- The password manager no longer gets confused when switching tabs in the preferences window.
- BetterZip no longer asks to save modified, empty archives when exiting.
- The queue progressbar didn't update correctly when extracting rar archives.
- BetterZip now prevents extracting of unsaved archives.
Version 2.0.1 (2011-06-23, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed extraction for SIT archives.
- Fixed the selection of service and default presets.
- Fixed correct execution of some post-extraction options (revealing the extracted files in Finder, removing the archive, ...)
- Fixed a potential security problem.
Version 2.0 (2011-06-22, for Mac OS X 10.6 and later)
New Features
- Queueing of multiple archive operations
- Services: Extract and compress files through the Finder's contextual menu
- Presets: create configurations for extracting and compressing archives
- Password manager
- Test archive integrity
- New, friendly layout
- BetterZip is now 64-bit
- Replaced filebrowser with favorites sidebar
- Quick Look inside archive
- More archiving options (expert options)
- Added configurable filters to remove unwanted files (e.g., Windows Explorer files) when extracting
- BetterZip can now extract pieces of partially damaged archives
- View unrecognized files as text in preview
- BetterZip 2 can automatically set the archive's file modification date to the latest date of any file inside the archive
Enhancements
- Removed confusing Mac/Compatibility mode switch
- Better error handling
- Re-saving multi-part archive with fewer parts will remove no longer used old parts
- Execute a script after extraction or archive saving, e.g., hand extracted files to a virus scanner, upload archive to a server, attach to email after save, ...
- The modification date is displayed will automatically change format depending on the available space.
- Newer XAR format (safariext-files) can now be opened and extracted.
- Show estimated compressed size for files in solid archives.
- XAR: better display of save-progress, more save-settings.
- BetterZip now bases all file sizes calculations on 1 KB = 1000 bytes, 1 MB = 1000 KB, 1 GB = 1000 MB.
- Better structured more complete help.
Bug Fixes
- svn-Patterns: Escaped the dot correctly.
- In flat view BetterZip no longer keeps the files listed in order of their folder.
- BetterZip couldn't be made the default handler for tbz files on some configurations.
Version 1.8.3 (2009-09-09) - Download (for Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5)
Bugs fixed
- Tar archives couldn't be opened reliably on Mac OS X 10.6.
- Header encryption was dropped when re-saving a header encrypted archive.
Version 1.8.2 (2009-09-01)
New Features
- BetterZip now uses pbzip2 for BZip2 compression. This parallel version can utilize multiple CPU cores resulting in faster compression.
- Showing and hiding columns can now be done through a contextual menu accessed by clicking on the header of the main table like in iTunes or other programs.
- Added optional header encryption for 7-zip and rar formats. Select this option in the save panel in the pop-up button "Encryption method".
Changes
- Tar archives couldn't be opened on Mac OS X 10.6.
Bugs fixed
- The BetterZip icon was shown without a name in Activity Monitor, Force Quit window and DragThing.
- Fixed a possible crash in the registration window when entering or editing the key.
- Integrated the latest rarlib for faster and more stable extraction of rar files.
- Extracting an empty folder from an archive didn't work.
- The progress bar in some tar archives behaved strangely.
Version 1.8.1 (2009-04-29)
New Features
- BetterZip can now concatenate split files: something.001 + something.002 + ...
- Added a Russian localization by Alexandr Slavyshensky.
Bugs fixed
- File modification times in zip files created with BetterZip were shifted by the timezone offset.
- Folder modification times were always set to the time of the archive creation.
- When RAR files were re-saved they always ended up as multi-volume archives.
- Files in multi-volume RAR archives with missing parts can be previewed and extracted again, if the missing parts are not necessary.
- RAR files with header encryption are handled in a better way now. You get repeated chances to enter the correct password and the archive will no longer be moved to the trash when you cancel the process. (If you had enabled this feature in the preferences.)
- Only the first part of a multi-volume RAR archive with the old naming scheme (r00,...) was deleted automatically when the deleting option was set.
Version 1.8 (2009-03-03)
New Features
- Archives can now be moved to the trash automatically after a direct extraction (set this in the preferences, tab Advanced).
- Added a switch in the preferences to suppress the display of an extraction's destination in the Finder.
- Open, extract, and create XAR archives.
- Open and extract PKWARE AES encrypted zip archives.
- Added support for Python eggs. At least zip based eggs.
- Added the Chinese localization by He Yunxuan.
Changes
- Speed-up for zip and 7-zip.
- Rar compressed comicbook files (cbr) can now be handled by other programs without losing rar handling in BetterZip.
- Worked around a problem with the built-in archive handler in Windows XP and Vista.
- Tar based archives that only have a . folder are displayed now as a normal folder. Previously the . folder was always treated as a hidden folder.
- Small enhancements in the registration window.
Bugs fixed
- In some cases the automatically created destination folder name included .part01 when extracting a multi-volume rar archive.
- Rar files that didn't have the correct magic bytes at the beginning of the file could not be opened.
- Larger archives (4-8GB) couldn't be created with zip format.
- Old format uncompressed tar archives were not recognized and couldn't be opened.
- Previewing files and switching archives via filesystem browser could lead to a crash.
- After modifying a tbz or tgz archive a save operation would result in an uncompressed tar archive.
- BetterZip now correctly detects when a wrong rar password was used for extraction.
- Fixed two minor memory leaks.
- Extracting two folders where one's name is the prefix of the second's (e.g., data and data2) would only extract the first.
Version 1.7.3 (2008-10-21)
New features
Changes
- Extracting one file that has already been previewed from a RAR archive is considerably faster now.
- RAR compression will now add -m3 option for normal compression, thus overriding whatever factor is specified in the rarrc configuration file.
- Live updating transcript drawer while extracting rar archives.
- Removed the "hidden folders removal" window. Instead, left-over temp folders are silently moved to the trash.
Bugs fixed
- Opening multiple parts from a multi-volume archive no longer opens multiple windows. This was especially annoying when direct extraction was used as default.
- Archives with a dollar sign in their names could not be extracted.
- Single files from archives created by MobileMe couldn't be extracted, if the extracted file contained certain international characters.
- Executables extracted from an archive couldn't be executed, if they had the s-attribute set.
Version 1.7.2 (2008-08-05)
Bugs fixed
- 1-Click-Save crashed, if the original archive has been deleted in the mean time.
- Changing some settings in the preferences window could crash BetterZip, if a window was closed before the change.
- The open command in the file menu didn't work in 1.7.1.
- Fixed a possible crash when extracting RAR archives with direct extraction.
- Fixed a problem when moving a file out of a folder, then deleting the folder, and saving the archive.
- CBR archives didn't open correctly.
Version 1.7.1 (2008-06-20)
Bugs fixed
- Fixed a problem with the update checker. It did not work in version 1.7. Please update manually, by downloading the disk image and copying it over the old version.
- Fixed crash reporter crash.
- Fixed problem with password encrypted zip files.
- Fixed another problem with large 7z files.
- Fixed problem with extracting single files from cpio archives.
Version 1.7 (2008-06-19)
New features
- Added keyboard shortcut for 1-click save: Command+Option+S.
- Added Spanish localization. Thank you, Hugo Bueno Sánchez!
- Added crash reporter. Thank you, Jelle De Laender from CodingMammoth!
During the first launch BetterZip may report crashes that happend in the last 30 days.
- Attributes of executable files that were created on FAT file systems (Windows) are now set automatically so that the file can be exectued.
- Added LZH file handling for more subformats.
Changes
- You can now set the location for temporary folders which is ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems by default. If you really need to change this, e.g., because your startup disk is full, you can change it with this terminal command:
defaults write com.macitbetter.betterzip MIBTempFolderPath "/your/path"
Bugs fixed
- Opening very large zip and 7z archives could fail under certain circumstances.
- Extracting archives that contained accented characters could fail under certain circumstances.
- Under rare conditions BetterZip would crash during the registration process.
- Fixed CPIO support.
- Fixed Japanese and French help files.
Version 1.6.2 (2008-04-22)
New features
- Command+Option+F: Set focus to toolbar search field (like in Finder, iTunes, and Mail).
Changes
- Tweaked preferences window icons.
- The direct extraction progress window now remembers its position.
Bugs fixed
- Filenames containing characters that could be interpreted by the shell like (), <>, |, &, $, \, ', ` would not work.
- If opening failed while an empty window was open, BetterZip would fall into one infinite loop asking for a password.
- I you wanted to add an archive into another archive by clicking the toolbar button "Add", the archive would be opened instead.
- When checking or unchecking the Kind colum in the preferences nothing happened until you checked or unchecked something else.
- Direct extract with an open empty document didn't do anything.
Version 1.6.1 (2008-04-09)
New features
- Allow previewing and viewing of rtfd files.
Changes
- I removed the 'Matryoshka archives' warning. Archives dropped into an empty BetterZip window will now be opened without any interaction needed. To add an archive to a new archive, hold down the command key while dropping the file into an empty window.
- Enhanced the "remove temporary folder cleanup" window.
Bugs fixed
- International character file names didn't work.
- Fixed icons in preferences window.
- Concurrent direct extractions would terminate after the first has finished.
Version 1.6 (2008-04-01)
New features
- Upon popular demand, I have added an option to make direct extraction the default. When this option is checked, BetterZip will immediately extract archives instead of opening them in a window. Find this new option in the preferences window on the General tab. It's off by default.
Changes
- I have changed the shortcut for direct extraction from Command to Control+Command, because holding down the Command key was not sufficient for keyboard users, since they need to hold down the Command key in any case.
- An archive's file format is no longer determined by the file extension, but by analyzing the actual file data. This is more secure and flexible.
Bugs fixed
- Double tooltips in the file browser drawer on Leopard are now suppressed.
- The "Removing temporary folders" window sometimes locked up BetterZip.
- The file browser could be rather slow on Leopard. This is fixed now.
- The compression level setting for zip archives was ignored. Regardless of your selection, BetterZip always used normal compression.
- On some Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) systems opening larger zip archives could take a very long time. This was fixed. As a side effect, opening archives is now a lot quicker on all systems.
- When you opened a rar archive and saved it without the rar utility installed, BetterZip could hang.
- BetterZip would freeze when opening a multi-volume rar file with missing parts.
- Opening multi-volume rar archives using the old naming scheme rar, r00, r01, ...) by clicking any part other than the first did not work. Now, BetterZip will automatically open the first volume.
Version 1.5.6 (2007-11-21)
Bugs fixed
- Setting BetterZip as default handler for archive file types should now work reliably on both systems (10.4 and 10.5).
- Fixed saving SIT archives in another format.
Version 1.5.5 (2007-11-07)
Changes
- Holding down the command key and opening an archive while BetterZip is already running now extracts the archive directly.
Bugs fixed
- Filebrowser does no longer go into the autofs folder /net which could hang the program.
- Various file types (e.g., ZIP) could not be associated with BetterZip due to a change in Leopard. The type system in Mac OS X is still not very predictable. For best results open the preferences, go to the tab File Types, click the Handle None button and then either click the Handle All button or select which file types BetterZip should handle using the check boxes in the list.
- The archive mode icon in the status bar was clipped on Leopard.
- Fixed a possible hang (see marbleofdoom.com) when extracting an archive containing a circular symbolic link.
Version 1.5.4 (2007-10-23)
New Features
- BetterZip is now ready for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).
Changes
- RAR now stores symbolic links as such, which is now consistent with all other archive formats.
- Extracting when the preview drawer is open is much faster now.
Bugs fixed
- SIT: The wrong file size was displayed for files that only consisted of a resource fork.
- Direct extract (holding down the Command key while opening an archive from Finder) crashed for larger archives.
- An error occured when extracting folders with custom icons from tarballs.
- When previewing files in a password protected archive you were asked for the password for every file.
- Fixed the progress indicator for SIT extraction: It was much faster than the actual extraction.
- Folder properties like color labels and icon positions were not saved correctly.
Version 1.5.3 (2007-10-11)
Bugs fixed
- The function in version 1.5.2 that identified 002, 003, ... files as parts of a multi-volume archive misidentified 7z files breaking handling of 7-zip files. Sorry for the inconvenience of upgrading BetterZip twice in one day!
Version 1.5.2 (2007-10-11)
Changes
- Added xpi (Firefox extensions) and nth (Nokia theme file) as file extensions for zip archives.
- Files with the extensions 002, 003, ... will be recognized as archives. If you open any file from a multi-volume archive, BetterZip will automatically try to open the first file from the series instead.
- Speed enhancement: The file browser is only populated when the drawer is open.
Bugs fixed
- When extracting single files from a tarball the resource fork was not always restored correctly. There was no problem, if you extracted all files.
- Extracting Mac OS 9 files from zip archives did sometimes work incorrectly.
- The sizes of files larger than 4GB were incorrectly displayed for RAR archives.
- Some SIT files were only partially extractable. This should be fixed now. If you encounter SIT files which BetterZip does not handle correctly, please let me know.
Version 1.5.1 (2007-08-21)
Changes
- Enter starts file renaming like Return. Home and End keys scroll the main list of files to the top resp. bottom.
Bugs fixed
- Excessively updating the progress indicator slowed extracting RAR archives down. It's now 6 times faster.
- Extracting only selected files using the toolbar or menu works again. The bug also made extracting a file that has already been previewed slow.
- Zip64 support fixed. WinZip couldn't open large zip files created by BetterZip which, to be perfectly honest, was BetterZip's fault.
- Repeatedly saving with password encryption could result in unencrypted archives.
- Zip files always opened with StuffIt (if installed) despite BetterZip's "Handle All".
- Opening multi-volume 7-zip archives with encrypted headers didn't work.
- Resource forks were ignored when displaying sizes/compression ratios for SIT archives.
Version 1.5 (2007-06-26)
New Features
- Added a preview drawer that can quickly display image, pdf, html, and text based files.
- Added support for SIT, HQX, DD, BIN archives.
- Added the option to automatically quit BetterZip after the last window has been closed.
- Added an option to automatically save archives next to the original files.
Changes
- Speed improvements, especially for rar archives.
- Opening a file that is not an archive through the File menu will now create a new, untitled archive and put the file into it.
- Removed compression setting for bzip2, because it was completely useless.
- Viewing files no longer uses AppleScript.
Bugs fixed
- The table on the file types preferences tab is no longer editable.
- Fixed file handling for tgz and tbz archives. Please revisit the "file types" tab in the preferences window to update your settings for these types.
- Rar now works correctly with non-English character sets.
- The window which lets you remove temporary folders suppressed the display of a new window when starting BetterZip (if you have enabled this option).
- Under certain conditions BetterZip could crash when closing a window.
- Custom folder icons are preserved and restored.
- When extracting read only files resource forks could not be restored.
- Files with invalid resource forks (I still don't know which archiver creates those) could not be restored.
Version 1.4.2 (2007-02-21)
New Features
- Added support for uncompressed archives.
- Added a preference tab that lets you choose which file types BetterZip should handle.
Changes
- Updated the included unrar command-line tool to version 3.60 enhancing the compatibility with newer rar archives.
- Zip files are now recognized by their magic bytes, allowing zip archives with arbitrary filename extensions.
- New-line characters in the registration code field are now automatically removed.
- Removed timer when trial period is over.
Bugs fixed
- Fixed possible crash when dragging files with non-English character names from tar archives.
- Updated tooltip for toolbar button «Clean» to correctly describe its new function.
- Deleting and re-adding files with the same name in an archive would not allow a later "Save As".
- The statusbar wasn't updated after cleaning or changing the archive mode.
Version 1.4.1 (2007-02-06)
New Features
- Added a button to restore the default cleaning patterns.
Changes
- Increased speed for viewing and extracting files smaller than 2MB.
Bugs fixed
- Extracting files with international character filenames from certain ZIP archives was broken.
- Viewing files with international character filenames inside RAR archives was broken.
- File attributes could get lost with certain ZIP archives.
Version 1.4 (2007-01-30)
New Features
- Clean arbitrary files and folders using regular expressions. Very handy for stripping source control folders (.svn or CVS).
- DEB, RPM archive formats are now supported.
- Increased speed when extracting single files from large zip archives.
- tar.gz is now opened in one step.
- Allow Extract All and 1-Click-Extract after trial period has ended.
- Added a Remember Settings function to the save panel.
- Added 1-Click-Save.
- The main list and the file browser let you jump to files by typing the first letters of the filename.
- Added support for using PathFinder instead of Finder.
- Use arbitrary application for viewing a file (e.g., TextMate or BBEdit).
Changes
- Get in touch is now a direct e-mail link.
- After doing a 1-Click-Extract the extracted item is revealed and selected in the Finder.
- __MACOSX is removed once it becomes empty.
- AppleDouble files (._) are now removed if the corrseponding data file is deleted.
- (incl. hidden) in the status line is only displayed if there are really hidden items and it also displays the number of hidden items included.
Bugs fixed
- Open rar or 7-zip archives with encrypted headers didn't work.
- Closing a window with unsaved changes and then clicking Save didn't work perfectly.
- Toolbar drawing bug fixed.
- Extracting an archive by double clicking in Finder with Command key pressed left a temp folder behind.
- __MACOSX was displayed after saving a zip file even if it no longer existed in the archive.
- Saving encrypted archives a second time dropped the encryption.
- Cancelling the extraction of a zip archive could hang BetterZip.
- Fixed a possible crash when extracting to a folder where you don't have write access.
Version 1.3.1 (2006-10-23)
Changes
- The search field is now cleared when opening a new archive from the filesystem browser.
- The temporary folders that popped up in Finder while extracting archives are no longer displayed. There is an additional window that lets you remove orphaned temp folders when starting BetterZip. As long as you don't see this window there aren't any of these hidden folders.
Bugs fixed
- Cleaning was disabled for most archive formats.
- Extracting gz archives in paths with spaces in the path name was broken.
- Viewing files from a new, not yet saved archive left the progress indicator panel open, locking the archive window.
- Saving zip archives on a Mac Pro didn't work under certain circumstances.
- Opening an archive in a hidden folder from Finder didn't work.
Version 1.3 (2006-10-10)
New Features
- Added LHA/LZH, ARJ, CAB, CHM, ISO decompression.
- Added support for Java zip files with the extensions par, sar, wsr.
- Rename files and folders inside archives.
- Create new folders inside archives.
- Filebrowser: A drawer with the contents of hard discs only showing folders and archives.
- Open, extract, and create AES-256 encrypted (WinZip compatible) zip files.
- Open, extract, and create zip files larger than 2GB.
- Zip-splitting, compression factor for zip archives.
- Open and extract archives (rar and 7-zip) with encrypted listings.
- Enhanced and completed Japanese and French localizations.
- After doing a 1-Click-Extract the extracted folder is displayed in Finder.
- BetterZip now suggests a filename in save panel when saving a new archive.
Changes
- Increased speed of extracting single files (especially from large archives).
- Progress bars (especially for larger archives) are more accurate.
- Long operations (extracting and saving archives) are now done in threads -> no beachball, cancel operations whenever you like.
- Transcript output is always scrolled to the end.
- Transcript drawer remembers its size and whether it was open or closed.
- Outlineview (main archive listing) got tooltips when column is too narrow to display all the text.
- Removed -s switch for rar archive creation. You can control whether solid archives are created through the .rarrc configuration file. For 7-zip use defaults.
- BetterZip now produces zip files that are compatible with the format Opera uses for skins.
- Viewing / extracting didn't work for newly added or moved files until the archive was saved. Now it does.
- Saving an archive repeatedly while deleting, adding, or moving items was not possible. Now it is.
Bugs fixed
- No more error messages when running multiple copies on one machine.
- If your name contains international characters, it was mangled in the registration box. I am really sorry for that.
- Fixed the save panel's strange behaviour with adding double extensions to the filename when recoding a multi-part archive.
- Cleaning tbz/tgz was broken.
- Rar was listed as a usable compressor even if the external rar component was not installed or moved to an unknown location.
- Files with huge resource forks were not compressed with a good compression factor with tgz/tbz.
- When extracting or saving an archive the sizes of resource forks will now be added to the size in the progress indicator.
- Viewing files often worked only with the second double click.
- Cmd+Extract of file-packages (e.g. widgets) will now work correctly.
- Saving after pressing Cmd+W was broken.
- Saving resource forks with RAR/7-zip was broken in 1.2.2.
- CMSCreateDataProviderOrGetInfo messages are no longer displayed in the console.
- Fixed (irrelevant) console output "CFURLGetFSRef failed".
Version 1.2.2 (2006-08-29)
New Features
- Japanese and French localizations have been added.
- Added a flat list view which will show you all the files and folders in a flat view without the folder hierarchy.
This mode is useful, if you need to sort the files regardless of their position within the
folder hierarchy (e.g., by modification date).
- Added a path column, especially needed when using the flat list view.
- BetterZip can now open and extract old-style multi-volume rar archives (with extensions rar, r00, r01, ...)
as well as the already supported new-style archives (with extensions part01.rar, part02.rar, ...)
Changes
- The .app extension is now displayed.
- Text columns are now trimmed in the middle (like Finder does).
Bugs fixed
- The preferences panel didn't work on the first click (funny that very few people noticed this)
- Compression factor on uncompressed tar could be changed, without effect, of course.
- If there was a space in the path to BetterZip's current location, 7-zip and rar didn't work.
- BetterZip crashed when saving as tar or 7-zip in Mac-mode and the user was not the owner of all files in the archive.
- BetterZip crashed when trying (and failing) to extract from a multi-volume zip file, which is still not supported,
but at least it doesn't crash anymore.
- A file with unprintable characters in its filename was not extracted from zip archives.
Version 1.2.1 (2006-08-01)
New Features
- GZip and BZip2 compressed tar archives now support setting the compression level.
Changes
- Passwords can now contain spaces and various other special characters.
- When extracting a file package and there already is a package with the same name at the extraction destination the contents are not merged. Instead the existing package is completely replaced. Of course a warning panel will ask you whether you really want to do this.
- Saving archives and overwriting an old version got some additional level of security. Basically, a backup of the old archive is created and only removed after the new archive has sucessfully been written.
- When trying to create an archive in a folder where you have no permission to write an error message will tell you what the problem is. This is not perfect, and I am working on a feature to let you authenticate as admin instead.
Bugs fixed
- On some systems opening single GZip and BZip2 files was broken.
- Creating archives on other devices than the system disk (e.g., network mounted folders) was broken under certain conditions.
Version 1.2 (2006-07-11)
New Features
- BetterZip can extract and create archives in these new formats now: RAR, 7-Zip. Choose which format to use in the «Save File» panel. These two new formats allow strong password encryption and multi-volume archives. Creating RAR files requires downloading (and registering) RAR as an external program. Open the preferences panel and click Helpers for more information.
- BetterZip can now save PKZip2 encrypted ZIP archives.
- BetterZip can open CPIO and compressed CPGZ files.
- BetterZip opens archives 5 (yes: five!) times faster than before. Which is especially cool when opening an archive containing some 30000 files. Was: 26 seconds, is: 5 seconds on my PowerMac Dual G5. Extraction and saving also are a little faster now.
- A new function «1-Click Extraction» lets you extract the whole archive into the folder where the archive is located. You can make this default through the preferences panel.
- BetterZip now has a trancript drawer that lets you inspect the output of the external programs.
- Added a Beta programme update function.
Changes
- When extracting a small archive (less than three MB) no progress panel will drop down. Instead the cycling progress indicator in the lower left corner of the window will spin. Showing and removing the progress panel took more time than the actual archive operation. No way am I going to waste your time with window animations.
- The keyboard shortcuts for the various extraction operations have changed. The base command sequence remains ⌘ R. ⇧ will toggle Extract All/Selected while ⌥ now toggles 1-Click Extraction.
- Temporary folders are no longer hidden. So in the case of a
crash minor instability phenomenon you will see it in Finder and can remove it more easily.
Version 1.1.1 (2006-06-27)
Bugs fixed
- The check boxes for "Display hidden files/folders" and "File packages are expandable" in the preferences panel were not initialized correctly.
- JAR/WAR/EAR files are recognized as archives again. This was broken in version 1.1.
Version 1.1 (2006-06-14)
New Features
- You can create archives in all four supported formats now: zip, tar, tgz, and tbz. Choose which format to use in the «Save File» panel. This also means that you can now save tar archives as zip files and vice versa.
- BetterZip can now open PKZip2 encrypted archives. Note: At this time you can not create or save encrypted files. When saving a previously encrypted file it will lose its password protection.
- BetterZip got its German localization. Großartig!
- BetterZip now lets you drop files and folders of all types on its icon. If one of the dropped items is not recognized as an archive, BetterZip will create a new archive and put all the dropped files and folders in it.
- A new preference option lets you set whether file-packages like applications (which are really folders, but you know that by now) should be expandable in the list or not. Such folders have their own icons instead of the generic folder icon.
- When dropping an archive inside an empty archive window, BetterZip wonders whether you really wanted to add it or whether you wanted to open the archive (which is more likely considering all users).
Changes
- If the archive contains only one top-level folder (like most zip files on Mac OS X), it is automatically expanded.
- When adding files to an archive BetterZip will show you how many files will be added during the operation. (To make you feel more comfortable when adding large folder hierarchies and BetterZip starts working like crazy).
- Temporary files created while working with an archive (e.g. viewing files) will be removed when closing an archive.
- When trying to view a file that no application currently handles, you will be asked with which program you wish to open the file.
- Adding files to an archive should be considerably faster now, especially large files. And no additional temporary space will be required.
- Empty BetterZip windows will be reused when opening archives or adding files by dropping them on the BetterZip icon.
- BetterZip now checks the free space on the destination drive before starting to extract files.
Bugs fixed
- In the last release BetterZip did not really produce clean archives when saving in one of the tar formats.
- Initial sorting did not work correctly.
- Tar files containing files with international characters were not handled correctly.
- BetterZip could crash when adding a file to the root of the archive, then pressing Cmd+W, and saving the file.
- BetterZip could crash when the replace-file-panel came up and one of the files had an empty modification date. Why a file date could be empty is unclear, but I am researching this further.
- The message in the replace-file-panel was misleading when adding files to an archive.
Version 1.0.1 (2006-05-15)
New Features
- JAR/WAR/EAR files can now be opened with BetterZip. After all these are ordinary ZIP files.
Changes
- By default BetterZip now starts with an empty document window. You can change this in the Preferences.
Bugs fixed
- Archives containing filenames with international characters were not named correctly after extraction.
- BetterZip was a little chatty and output quite a bit of useless information to the console.
Version 1.0 (2006-05-04)
The adventure begins.
