Product Reviews

As industry standards go, Aladdin Systems has pretty much defined the Mac compression market. The company's freeware StuffIt Expander and shareware DropStuff are almost ubiquitous on Mac desktops, and the full-scale commercial offering, the venerable StuffIt Deluxe, offers power users an unmatched range of compression and encoding utilities.

StuffIt Deluxe 6.0 expands on the drag-and-drop compression and expansion options offered by Expander and DropStuff, new versions of which are included as part of this release. From Deluxe's own simple interface, which consists of a basic toolbar and archive viewer window, you can harness a range of powerful compression options for StuffIt archives. These include the ability to view the contents of an archive before expanding it or add new files to an existing archive. Additionally, you can compress files in a range of Mac, PC or Unix encoding formats. Alongside most of the standard compression formats, Deluxe 6.0 adds support for less fashionable file types, now allowing you to open RAR files and create LHA archives. Deluxe also offers the unique - and undeniably useful - ability to create self-extracting Mac or Windows-based archives.

Deluxe makes use of what it calls True Finder Integration (TFI), a Control Panel/extension combination comprising three modules that more closely link Deluxe with the Mac operating system. For example, TFI lets you create archives simply by appending the appropriate compression suffix - such as '.sit' or '.uu' - to an item's file name in the Finder, or make much of Deluxe's functionality accessible from the Finder's menu. TFI also incorporates the StuffIt Browser that allows you to navigate archives as you would normal folder items.

This version of StuffIt Deluxe is Carbonised, so it's suitable for use under Mac OS X beta, although it should be noted that elements of the program which require 'classic' Finder integration - in other words, all the TFI features - don't work with the beta version. And there's no evidence that the situation will change in the final version of Mac OS X. Deluxe's main

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features - including compression, encryption and joining - all function under the beta, but given that Expander is already OS X compatible, the benefits of Deluxe are less obvious for early adopters of the new operating system.

Functional changes in Deluxe 6.0 aren't as deep-seated as those of its predecessor, which introduced a new compression format incompatible with previous versions. Instead, the improvements here concentrate on new usability features, the most heralded of which is the Return Receipt technology. This allows the sender of a StuffIt 6.0 compressed file to request notification when it's successfully unstuffed by its recipient. Users of StuffIt 6.0 are prompted via a dialog box to open their default email application, and a successful notification message can be sent. There's no obligation to respond: the receipt request can be ignored or its details stored in a text file. When users of older StuffIt products open the archive, a plain text message appears with the unstuffed archive giving details of the sender's contact name, email address and message.

More compelling is the new ability to recover damaged archives. Archives that were previously totally irrecoverable can now be partly salvaged. Although corrupted archives still can't be repaired, you might be able to glean an important file or two that would otherwise be lost forever.

Another useful introduction, ArchiveSearch, is a standalone application that allows you to search inside compressed files for archived items. ArchiveSearch bears a similarity to the Mac OS's pre-Sherlock Find File dialog box, and its functionality follows a similar path, allowing you to search archive contents on any mounted volume by a range of specified criteria. Items matching the search description are displayed in a results window, and a quick double-click unstuffs them.

In terms of performance, this release is significant in offering nothing new: the revamp of the program has left the compression engine untouched. Ironically, this is good news in most circumstances - particularly for owners of pre-PowerPC Macs who can't upgrade to this version: files stuffed by this latest release can be opened by version 5.0, which is 68040 compatible. The obvious downside is that Deluxe 6.0 shows no improvement in either speed or compression ratios. But lack of earth-shattering improvements aside, StuffIt Deluxe is a very positive upgrade. This time Aladdin has done the sensible thing and avoided the compatibility problems that plagued early adopters of version 5.0. If you're coming up against the limitations of Expander or tiring of DropStuff's nag screen, this might be a good time to open the wallet.