Archived programs are an Internet trademark. Designed to compress and aggregate a collection of files into one easily manageable file, archives make downloading, transferring, and serving applications over the Internet much easier and more efficient than would otherwise be possible. The most common method for archiving has traditionally been the ZIP file, a format first offered by PKWare back in the mid-eighties.
While today the popularity and technology of ZIP files have largely been supplanted by self-extracting archives, ZIP files remain prevalent on the 'net and are still one of the most frequently encountered archive technologies.
The only problem with archived files is that, as a result of their compressed state, working with the individual files that have been stored within the archive involves first decompressing the archive. The first generation of tools created for the purpose of compressing and decompressing archives were primarily DOS-based programs (PKZip being the most prominent) that served their purpose but paled in comparison to their next generation counterparts.
