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AhmadFCheema edited this page Sep 14, 2017 · 1 revision

Welcome to the Metro-UI-Theme-for-Archivers wiki!

Had been using WinRAR with WinRAR Metro UI Theme by Dubaku. Due to teh premium nature of WinRAR, decided to continue with a free alternative. 7-Zip being the most popular one, was the obvious alternative. However, I was put-off by the aesthetics (especially the filetype icons as I hardly ever needed to open the 7-Zip File Manager). To keep the transfer as smooth as possible, I went on to create a duplicate theme for 7-Zip. Ended up transitioning from WinRAR to 7-Zip to PeaZip to Zipware and finally to Bandizip.

Other themes

Extraction applications

  • WinRAR
    • Best .RAR extraction speeds.
  • 7-Zip
    • .RAR extraction was observed to be 2-4 times slower than other applications.
    • Default theme and filetype icons are not aesthetically satisfactory.
  • PeaZip
    • Nice aesthetics and themes (best one being the default one). Interestingly, over 70% of its code comprises of CSS. Contains a file manager too.
    • Major fault was observed while extracting multiple archives. Unlike other applications, as the archives get sequentially extracted PeaZip opens a new dialog-box for each archive separately and that too in front of all open windows. This makes the workflow of performing some other task while extraction happens in the background, quite frustrating. In contrast, other applications open one dialog, which can easily be minimized and a user can continue with some other task.
  • Zipware
    • Aesthetically fine. Unlike WinRAR, extracting multiple archives doesn't automatically close the dialog and has to be manually closed. Has a nice little visual trick in its About menu.
    • Aside from not being as comprehensive as other extraction applications, my major problem with it was the, apparent absence of its own command parameters. Wanting to create a customized context menu entry, ended up spending a fair bit of time but remaining ultimately unsuccessful. Couldn't figure out what simple command could be used to extract an archive through Zipware.
  • Bandizip (Features)
    • Definitely the most customizable. More comprehensive context menu customization options.
    • Smart extract option is pretty neat which automatically extracts archives containing single files (or all files included in one parent directory) into the root folder and those consisting of multiple files in a new folder.
    • Most apparent deficiency is the absence of calculating multiple type checksums feature. Easily remedied by using other dedicated applications or registry scripts to add shortcuts through context menu entries for hash checksum calculations (such as Calculating.Hash.Checksums.reg or Calculating.Hash.Checksums.Cascading.reg).
    • In Bandizip > Options > Settings (F5) > Advanced > Check Delete extracted files when extraction is canceled. Otherwise, it will leave partially extracted incomplete files on the computer.
    • The website has some outdated content. It still mentions using 7-Zip's command line, but it had been replaced by bc.exe.
  • ExtractNow - Monitor directories for archives and automatically extract them. Not aesthetic.

Comparison tests

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