The article talks about what a "zip" format is, why it is needed, what programs work with it, and in particular, the two most popular ones are analyzed.
The beginning of the digital era
Once upon a time, not all could afford computers. They were bulky, and their computational abilities left much to be desired. By the way, most modern smartphones are more powerful than computers of the late 90s of the last century.
But gradually this changed, new technologies became more accessible, and with the transition of various enterprises and institutions to electronic document management, a need arose for the transfer of various files. However, as with ordinary users. First, floppy disks were used for this, then laser disks, and nowadays flash drives with memory cards. But the first floppy disks and PC hard drives had a very small memory size, and there was a need to somehow compress and archive files for storage. And various archivers came to the rescue. Including a similar built-in function is also in the operating systems of the Windows family. So what is a zip archive?
Definition
Zip is a compressed file format. Regardless of its original form, whether it be music, film or text, after compression it acquires just this format, and before using it, you need to unzip it. This can be done using the "native" program or other similar software. On Windows, starting with XP, there is a built-in ability to reduce the size of files, the so-called compressed zip folders. You can find this function as follows: right-click on a file or folder, select “Send” and then “Compressed Zip-folder”. After that, archiving and file size reduction will occur.
However, it is worth remembering that although all types of files are compressed, the success of this operation depends on their type. For example, it is best to reduce the size of text, binary files and system libraries, while music or movies in size lose slightly. So now we know what a zip archive is.
3rd party software
The ability to downsize data embedded in the operating system is not ideal. It is greatly simplified for the sake of speed, and over time many archiver programs appeared with the same feature, but with a more “advanced” algorithm of work and a number of additional functions. And one of them is 7Zip, in the common people called "7 zip". It has a wide range of features, such as choosing a compression method, on which the final result and time spent, archive format, the ability to set a password, split “heavy” files into several parts, and so on. It also supports working with formats of other archiver programs. It is distributed free of charge, and you can find it on the official website of the developer.
Winzip
Vin Zip is another similar program. But its peculiarity is that it is greatly simplified and designed for people who do not want to understand the mass of settings and work options. At the output, it creates a zip-format archive and supports only it. Simply put, it will not open the same 7 zip or rar format.
Its advantages include simplicity and high speed, and the disadvantages are weak compression and support for only one format. Nevertheless, the program is popular.
Mobile OS
Despite the fact that modern Internet technologies provide fast data transfer speeds, sometimes archivers are still needed, including tablets with smartphones. For example, archiving a dozen photos or other files and sending them is easier than messing with each one individually. In this case, even the compression itself is optional.
So we figured out what a zip format is.