{"id":6103,"date":"2020-09-15T02:42:55","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T07:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/?p=6103"},"modified":"2020-09-15T02:42:55","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T07:42:55","slug":"bad-design-winzip-an-annoying-pop-up-ad-from-an-irrelevant-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justinparrtech.com\/JustinParr-Tech\/bad-design-winzip-an-annoying-pop-up-ad-from-an-irrelevant-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Design: WinZip – An Annoying Pop-Up Ad from an Irrelevant Product"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bad Design: WinZip – An Annoying Pop-Up Ad from an Irrelevant Product<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

The company where I am currently employed uses WinZip as its desktop standard for archive software.<\/p>\n

This isn’t my preferred option, but whatever.<\/p>\n

One minute, I’m cruising around in a spreadsheet, and the next, this pops up:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They company in question has an enterprise license for WinZip, which means that I’m running a fully-licensed copy.<\/p>\n

I will cover some of the history of WinZip, and why I think it’s irrelevant, and then I will tell you exactly why I think this pop-up is wrong.\u00a0 I will also make some recommendations for both software designers and corporate desktop administrators.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some History<\/h2>\n

…and, “Why I think WinZip is irrelevant”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in the DOS days, there were competing lossless file compression standards, and that’s still true today.<\/p>\n

In the 1980’s and early 90’s, disk space was always at a premium, whether it was deciding what to delete off your hard drive so that you could install a new program, or how many programs you could back up to a floppy disk.<\/p>\n

And, before the internet, you connected to Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) through a very slow modem to find and download software.\u00a0 Smaller files meant that a BBS could host more files, and also, that your download time would be significantly faster.<\/p>\n

The first commonly-used compression program for microcomputers was simply called “ARC”.\u00a0 Not only did ARC compress files, but it had the ability to compress multiple files in to a single “archive” file, and later versions could even span multiple floppy disks – handy if you were backing up your hard drive.<\/p>\n

Due to its ease of use, single-file archive format, and itself being a small file that was easy to find and download, ARC quickly became standard among BBS operators and users.\u00a0 Every PC in the 80’s had a “C:\\UTILS” folder, and ARC was one of the programs inside of it.<\/p>\n

Although ARC<\/a> was commercial software developed by SEA corporation, it was distributed as “shareware<\/a>” – a license that allowed both individual users and BBS operators to freely “share” the file by copying it, but requested that users send in some money and obtain a proper license if they decided to keep using it.\u00a0 Of course, no one did that, and eventually, SEA released the source code for ARC.<\/p>\n

A couple of years later, along came Phil Katz<\/a>, who wrote a much faster and more efficient implementation of ARC, of course called PKARC, and rather than have both compression and extraction functions within the same executable, Phil Katz split the extraction function in to a separate program called PKXARC.\u00a0 This meant that you could download the much more svelt PKXARC if all you needed to do was extract files without compressing them, but in either case, you would benefit from the much faster code.<\/p>\n

PKARC soon became the de facto tool for using ARC files.<\/p>\n

Later, Phil Katz co-developed the ZIP file format – the same one that’s in use today.\u00a0 And, like ARC, everyone started using ZIP files, especially popular with BBS operators due to the smaller file sizes and faster extraction routines.<\/p>\n

Soon, like ARC, every PC had PKZIP and PKUNZIP in their C:\\UTILS folder alongside PKARC and PKXARC. Eventually, people just stopped using ARC altogether.<\/p>\n

And thus, Phil Katz built the bulk of the PKWare software empire off of one little shareware utility.<\/p>\n

However, PKZIP had one major drawback:\u00a0 It was a command-line program, requiring some knowledge of what a command line is, how to use it, and how to use PKZIP within it.<\/p>\n

As operating systems evolved toward Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) and began to focus on ease-of-use, there was clearly a gap.<\/p>\n

You could download a ZIP file from a BBS using your terminal program running in a window, but then you would have to shell out to a command prompt and run some arcane (pun intended) commands to extract the files within it, in to a usable format.<\/p>\n

In the early 90’s\u00a0WinZip<\/a> emerged as a graphical front-end to PKZip.\u00a0 With PKZip installed, and with WinZip properly installed and configured, a user could simply double-click on a zip file to extract its contents, or drag and drop some files to create a new ZIP file.\u00a0 WinZip handled the user interface, and on the back end, it ran PKZip with the appropriate command-line switches.<\/p>\n

Eventually, WinZip adopted a “clean-room” ZIP implementation, and dumped PKZip.\u00a0 Now, there was no complicated dependencies nor configuration.\u00a0 If a user needed to open a zip file, they could simply download and run WinZip as a single program.<\/p>\n

As Windows 95 boosted the popularity of home computing, WinZip quickly became much more popular than PKZip.\u00a0 PKWare made a feeble attempt to release a competing GUI product, but it was too-little, too-late.\u00a0 WinZip had been on the market longer, most users were familiar with it, it had better desktop integration, and it was far easier to use.<\/p>\n

By the late 90’s, WinZip was one of the first programs you needed to download after any new operating system was installed.<\/p>\n

Similar to PKWare, WinZip had a “trialware” license that allowed you to freely use it for a couple of weeks, and then either delete it or license it.<\/p>\n

To help drive revenue, unlicensed<\/strong> copies of WinZIp would pop up a friendly reminder.\u00a0 Once you entered a license code, the reminder disappeared.\u00a0 Further, a license was perpetual, and initially allowed for perpetual upgrades.\u00a0 So for about $10 (if I recall), not only could you license WinZip to get rid of the annoying pop-up, but you could also freely download and upgrade to the latest version every couple of months when it was released.<\/p>\n

WinZip prospered as it virtually ruled the market.\u00a0 Over time they added new features and updated the GUI, but WinZip was still WinZip.<\/p>\n

And then Microsoft released Windows XP, which had built-in support for zip files.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s hard to believe that Microsoft turned a blind eye to this lucrative niche for nearly 10 years, but on the other hand, they were probably gun-shy after having recently fought off anti-trust litigation from Netscape.\u00a0 In versions of Windows prior to XP, if you double-click on a ZIP file without WinZip (or another ZIP handler) installed, you more or less get a message that says “what the heck do you want me to do with this??”<\/p>\n

Now, with Windows XP and onward, you could double-click a ZIP file to open it, or right-click some files and send them to a “compressed folder”, which is Microsoft’s codename for a ZIP archive file.<\/p>\n

Even worse for WinZip, by the time Microsoft released XP, there were Free and Open Source Software (FOSS<\/a>) alternatives such as WinRAR and 7-Zip.\u00a0 Initially, each of these only supported a proprietary archive format (RAR and 7z respectively), but eventually they both ended up supporting multiple archive formats, including ZIP, and even the advanced features of the ZIP format, such as media spanning and AES encryption.<\/p>\n

And, WinZip’s market began to dry up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Casual users didn’t need to download anything – they simply used the operating system’s built-in ZIP file handler.<\/p>\n

Power users could download FOSS utilities for free, such as WinRAR and 7-Zip, and simply avoid both the cost of WinZip and its increasingly clingy, laggy user interface and more frequent and annoying beg-ware pop-ups.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, switching from a perpetual to an annual license model was a smart move for WinZip.<\/p>\n

Rather than die out like ARC and PKZip, there is just enough recurring revenue from corporate licensees to keep it on life support.<\/p>\n

So, despite being completely obsolete, WinZip is still running out there, with it’s ever-more kludgy and annoying user interface, limited features, and annoying pop-ups.<\/p>\n

And, companies like the one I work for are still running it, because, hey, it works, and hey, they still have a license for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why Pop-Up Ads are Bad<\/h2>\n

<RANT><\/span><\/p>\n

In case you don’t remember using a computer in the 2000’s, let me describe what it was like:<\/span><\/p>\n