Recent users of OSX get an unpleasant surprise when they try to download a file from the internet that is not a .dmg or .zip archive. Apple no longer includes Stuffit Expander as part of the operating system, and actually, there is a large segment of the Mac population who have become increasingly more unhappy with the bloat that Stuffit has become. So, how to open these files? Enter The Unarchiver...

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for Stuffit as well as "BOMArchiveHelper.app", the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder. It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. It is useful for opening Japanese archives, and should handle many other languages just as well.

It is very simple to use and install - simply copy it into your Applications folder or whereever you prefer (I keep it in /Applications/Utilities), and then set archive filetypes to open using it. This can either be done the usual way, or by double-clicking the icon to show The Unarchiver's preferences.

Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats. Support for so many formats is achieved by using the libxad unarchiving library.

The Unarchiver requires Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

When Mac OSX was introduced in 2001, OmniWeb was the web browser of choice for many early adopters. This program has gone through a number of changes throughout the years, and is now the most full-featured web browser on the Mac platform. It is built on the same WebKit foundation as Safari (actually, a more up-to-date version of WebKit), and is a perfect example of everything OSX software should be; fast, stable, attractive, and intuitive. Normally going for $30, an OmniWeb license can be had for $9.95 during the month of November. So, if you've been intrigued by OmniWeb but couldn't justify spending money for a web browser when many other choices are available for free, the folks at OmniGroup have made it a lot more affordable. For more information: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/