Sending Email attachments is easy, but can cause a lot of trouble for the recipient. Before you send an Email message, contact the recipient and agree on a compression format. Compression programs work like electronic suitcases. A suitcase allows you to carry your clothes relatively neatly on long trips. This is the same reason we use compression programs. There are several formats:
The most popular compression format is ZIP, an established compression format that is available on Linux, Windows, and Macs. The programs that you use to decompress filename.zip files include (but aren't limited to) Aladdin's Stuffit Expander (http://www.stuffit.com/cgi-bin/stuffit_loginpage.cgi?standardwinexp), a free cross-platform decompression program. It uncompresses all popular compressed and encoded formats including ZIP (.zip), MIME Base64 (.mim, .mime, .b64), RAR, UUENCODE (.uu, .uue), GZIP (.gz .z), ARJ (.arj .pak), ARC (.arc), BINHEX (.hqx) and STUFFIT (.sit .sea). This program's ease of use and ability to handle many file-types make it a must-have. For example, double-clicking on a zip file can create a directory and extract all files into it. Note that the program cannot handle multi-part or encrypted files.
You can create, as well as decompress, zip files on the Windows XP platform using built-in ZIP compression. Simply right click on the file or folder of files you want to compress and take advantage of the SEND TO COMPRESSED (ZIP) FOLDER.
Of course, there are a wealth of compression programs. At no cost, you can get IZArc (http://www.izarc.org/), a versatile, easy to use compression program. In addition to an easy to use Windows Explorer interface, IZArc allows standard operations such as adding, viewing, deleting, renaming files in a compressed archive. You can also use IZArc to install programs from the downloaded archive (a time-saver!), check archives for viruses, and perform multi-disk spanning of files. It is compatible with the popular ZIP format, as well as an alphabet soup of compression formats, including 7-ZIP, ACE,ARC, ARJ, BH, BZ2, CAB, DEB, GZ,HA, JAR, LHA, LZH,PAK, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR,TGZ, TZ, ZIP and ZOO.
You can also create self-extracting, or executable, password-protected archives that don't require a decompression program to expand. This is useful if you want to give a file to a neophyte who may not know how to handle compressed programs yet, as well as enhance security.
For Macintosh users, zipping is as simple as a right-mouse click (or Ctrl-Click with a single button mouse). When right-button mouse clicking, click on the file you want to ARCHIVE files to ZIP format.
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