Don't want to download a massive ZIP or RAR file just so you can extract one tiny file contained in the archive? ArchView is a Firefox add-on that will let you preview the contents of ZIP and RAR files posted online before you download them. And you can even download individual files from within the archive.

Archview hangs out in your status bar where you can click on it to enable or disable the plugin or change its settings. Future versions will add support for additional archive formats including ISO and 7z. Archview supports Firefox 2 and Firefox 3, but the version available at the official Firefox add-ons page claims that it isn't compatible with Firefox 3 beta 5 r Firefox 3 RC1. This isn't true, but you'll have to install the plugin from the developer's page if you're using anything newer than Firefox 3 beta 4.

[via gHacks]

Dziobas RAR Player is a media player with a couple of nice features, but one that stands out in particular: the ability to play an incomplete RAR file.

With videos that have been compressed as RAR files, you usually have to wait until the entire archive is downloaded before you can uncompress the file for playback. With Dziobas RAR player, you can view any portion of the RAR file you've downloaded without having to wait for the rest. This can be helpful in a few ways:

• You can make sure that the RAR file is actually what it claims to be
• You can make sure that you have the proper codecs on your system to playback the file
• You can watch the video while the rest downloads; if you time it right, you can watch the RAR file all the way through without ever having to uncompress it.

To open an incomplete RAR file for playback in Dziobas RAR player, go to File, Streaming from Unrar, and locate the RAR file. That's all there is to it. The only limitation we could find was the inability to fast forward and rewind the movie while it was still downloading.

Dziobas RAR player also supports subtitles, has a thumbnail generator, and more. The free program is Windows only.

[via Sizlopedia]

• Archive formats - ZIP, 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, BH, BZ2, CAB, CPIO, DEB, GCA, GZ, IMP, JAR, LHA (LZH), LIB, RAR, RPM, SQX, TAR, TGZ, TBZ, TAZ, YZ1
• Disc image formats - BIN, C2D, IMG, ISO and Nero's NRG

TUGZip can also create archives in most of these formats, Including self extracting archives. All the wile using a 3 pane explorer interface (or you can change it via options to a more standard one or two pane. TUGzip also includes an explorer context addon, so you can compress files into your favorite archive, without even having to open the program. All of this, and blazing fast too.

[ via Ghacks ]

RAR files seem like an odd niche to target for a file upload and hosting service, but that's just what RAR Host does. RAR, of course, is a popular popular format for archiving and compressing files, and in order to upload files to RAR Host you'll need to archive them with a program like WinRAR. Once you've got a RAR file to upload, RAR Host offers some nice features, including allowing up to 200MB uploads, listing files inside archives before you download them, advanced password support, and keeping files until nobody has downloaded them for two months. RAR Host was pretty slick when I tried it, with a slick Web 2.0 look and a nice upload progress bar. Look after the jump for a few screenshots of it in action.