I’ve blogged recently about taking better screenshots, now I’m gonna blog about a great tool, 7zip, to help you with compressing needs. This application is a must have in your blogging tools list!
Every blogger sooner or later faces problems extracting various kinds of files. The most popular compressing method is zip, you will most probably be able to work with zip files.
But how about others? Especially if you are using open source softwares, many softwares provide their source codes, installation files etc in different compressed files. There are paid applications to help you with these problems, but hey!, why pay where you can get it for FREE? Yes, you heard me right! It is more than just being free, it’s open source! .
Also, if you are among 63 lucky speakers, you can have this tool in your language, if not 
you can contribute your time and effort to translate it into your language.
7zip Features:
- High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
- Supported formats:
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
- For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
- Self-extracting capability for 7z format
- Integration with Windows Shell
- Powerful File Manager
- Powerful command line version
- Plugin for FAR Manager
- Localizations for 63 languages
By default, it will compress in .7z files, you can easily change it to your favourite compressing format. However, they claim that 7z is 30%-70% better than zip format.
You can extract files without opening them, compress into multiple files, unpack almost every kind of files - iso, cab, rar, arj, lzh, chm and even popular installation files as rpm from Redhat Linux and deb files from Debian and Ubuntu Linux!
So this is another hot application in your ultimate blogging tools list! More coming soon, so stay tuned!
