Windows has shipped with "ZIP folders" and the ability to create and extract ZIP files since the late 90s/early 2000s I believe (not sure exactly what version.) As of the latest versions of Windows 11, Windows ships with libarchive-based archive extraction, which should let you extract many archives natively (including 7-zip and RAR) via the UI as well as the CLI (via BSD TAR, which also ships with Windows these days.)
ZIP Folders was developed by Dave Plummer from Microsoft (who runs the Dave's Garage YouTube channel). It was made in his spare time, then was licensed to Microsoft afterwards.
Is there any proof that any version of windows shipped his implementation? Because many things that scammer (like literally he ran a pc tech support scam company) says have little to no relation to reality
Why not? It's probably the most used archiver in history. It may not be the greatest technical marvel but it was well enough liked in its day (it has been fully replaced in newer versions).
Because it doesn't work correctly for advanced users and doesn't work well for low skill or intermediate users. It's a poor solution to handling zip files that doesn't work well for any class of users.
They were introduced in the Microsoft Plus package for Windows 98, then finally integrated into Windows ME. Windows ME was released after Windows 2000, so the feature didn't appear there. But it did appear in XP. You could actually install the Windows ME version of the shell extension on 2000.
Ah, well that might explain my thinking it came around in the XP days - by then I had discovered the WinRAR indefinite trial, so I didn't really need an alternative.
it goes much further back than that, think it was xp
the issue is that it sucks, it's at least 10x slower than 7 zip, maybe more, showing lots of files/folders freezes the explorer gui on w10 and it only supports .zip (which could've been changed on w11, never used, never tried)
It does ship with one, right click on zip file -> extract all. Why are you posting incorrect information that would have been clarified to you by a 3 second google search beforehand?
It didn't ship in the distant past due to anti-competitive reasons but it is there now.
I think you're talking about the extraction feature that came with ZIP folders. Aside from being clunky it's also rather inefficient and slow, it doesn't have any provisions for handling issues like mojibake, and is generally just not very robust. So why? AFAIK it's because the ZIP Folders/Visual ZIP code was basically integrated with Windows and then never updated. When it shipped in Windows XP (and possibly earlier, but I don't remember for sure) I think it was perfectly serviceable... it just didn't improve much over time.
I can't really stomach Windows 11 so I don't personally use it but my understanding is that the latest version of Windows 11 has finally integrated a better solution, implementing archive extraction based on libarchive.
Terrible how? It just needs to zip and unzip and it does that fine for most users. What else do you expect for casual users? For power usurers there's 7zip or WinRar or other solutions.
> Maybe I should say, why does the Windows unarchiving feature suck?
And what stopped you from saying that? HN rules say comments should be in good faith. What you said has clearly different meaning than what you say you meant.
When it has bad support for just zip I think phrasing it as windows lacking an unarchiving utility is reasonable enough, and certainly not bad enough to get flagged like the comment currently is. It's not bad faith, jeez. I'm going to go vouch for the comment and hope it survives.
And it's only because of that comment that I learned windows 11 finally improves things.
HN users are different breed of sticklers that aren't representative of the norm.
There's a grand canyon gap between something not existing and you not liking it how it works because your personal tastes, hence why the comment is flagged, because it's in bad faith and disingenuous.
> HN users are different breed of sticklers that aren't representative of the norm.
It acts kind of like a folder but tons of things don't work when you navigate into it. And it hasn't been improved in 20 years. It's bad.
It's significantly worse for a random person because stuff breaks and they don't know why. At least if you try to run an exe it asks about extracting the whole thing so that one case is less likely to blow up.
> There's a grand canyon gap between something not existing and you not liking it how it works because your personal tastes, hence why the comment is flagged, because it's in bad faith and disingenuous.
Just the fact that it doesn't work for any other archive format is enough to make the original comment merely sloppy wording. It's not bad faith or disingenuous. Don't be so judgemental.
It does, but it's annoying because it treats things as folders, which I suppose is nice if you just want to look inside the zip, but a pain if you just want to extract something in a normal way like you'd do with any other unzipping utility.
