News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

December 13, 2007

software

Take a Quick Look inside archives

Posted Dec. 13, ’07, 2:39 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category | Software

betterzipquicklook1.jpgUnlike the sketchy reliability of .Mac’s new Leopard features, the learning curve associated with Spaces, and the frustrated sighs surrounding the contentiously-useful Stacks, most can agree that Quick Look is just plain awesome. Its only real downside is the fact that it doesn’t support certain file types.*

Thankfully, though, it’s open for devs to fiddle with and expand, and expand they have with all sorts of cool plugins. Derik already mentioned one that lets you Quick Look the contents of a zip file with the bluntly-named Zip Quick Look Plugin. But J.Gruber links to a more robust, feature-full plugin called BetterZip Quick Look Generator, which was just updated to version 1.1.

The BetterZip plugin (not to be confused with the BetterZip app itself) allows for hierarchal viewing of compressed archives, and is even configurable right from the Quick Look pane. It also supports a crap-load of archive formats: ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt’s SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary. And, yes, it’s free.

(*Alright, people: tell me what other flaws plague Quick Look.)


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