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Author Topic: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying  (Read 9116 times)

app103

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When you zip up files with the intention of giving, selling, emailing to others, please do not include the following files and folders:

  • _MACOSX
  • .DS_Store
  • Thumbs.db

Nobody wants this crap!  >:(

Besides, leaving it out makes smaller zip files, which means faster up/downloads, takes up less space on your server, uses less bandwidth.

Edvard

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2013, 09:41 PM »
I thought Apple software did this by default for some unknown reason, and there was no way around it.  You mean there's a way to shut that off?  :huh:

Here's a few:
http://cybernetnews....ut-ds_store-on-a-mac
http://stackoverflow...ithout-macosx-folder
http://stackoverflow...files-in-compression

eleman

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2013, 02:50 AM »
I really don't think the ignorant masses will care when compressing files.

I, on the recipient end of their archives, made a few adjustments to winrar's default extraction profile, so that it won't extract thumbs.db or desktop.ini files. But the trick doesn't work on _Macosx crap. As always, Apple's junk outdoes that of Windows.

Stoic Joker

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2013, 06:46 AM »
IIRC the _MACOSX folder contains the file system fork content/files that Windows doesn't/can't use and Mac's assimilate back into the file system object at the other end transparently.

app103

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2013, 09:29 AM »
Krishean mentioned to me how much fun it is to look inside those Thumbs.db files with file recovery tools and find thumbnails that the original owner probably had no idea that they were sharing with the world.  ;D

So, for windows users, including those Thumbs.db files in a zip could be a privacy/security issue, too.

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2013, 01:40 PM »
Krishean mentioned to me how much fun it is to look inside those Thumbs.db files with file recovery tools and find thumbnails that the original owner probably had no idea that they were sharing with the world.  ;D

So, for windows users, including those Thumbs.db files in a zip could be a privacy/security issue, too.

 :o

Could someone post some suggestions on how to do this? I never really understood the scope of Thumbs.db files (they're sorta magically something Windows does right?) Is there a simple viewer program that can look at them?

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2013, 01:42 PM »
When you zip up files with the intention of giving, selling, emailing to others, please do not include the following files and folders:

  • _MACOSX
  • .DS_Store
  • Thumbs.db

Nobody wants this crap!  >:(

Besides, leaving it out makes smaller zip files, which means faster up/downloads, takes up less space on your server, uses less bandwidth.

Hi App,
can you explain what happens when you select a bunch of stuff and hit "send-to-zipped folder"? That's all I do to create zips out of something. So if that somehow creates a thumbs.db file, can you advise what I should be doing instead?

Tinman57

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2013, 07:49 PM »
Krishean mentioned to me how much fun it is to look inside those Thumbs.db files with file recovery tools and find thumbnails that the original owner probably had no idea that they were sharing with the world.  ;D

So, for windows users, including those Thumbs.db files in a zip could be a privacy/security issue, too.

 :o

Could someone post some suggestions on how to do this? I never really understood the scope of Thumbs.db files (they're sorta magically something Windows does right?) Is there a simple viewer program that can look at them?

  Think of .db files as database files.  Windows creates them when you use thumbnail view in a folder of pictures.  The .db is just a catalog of what's in the folders they occupy to make searching and viewing faster.  There is a way to disable it in Windows, but I just can't remember how to do it....

Stoic Joker

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #8 on: April 25, 2013, 07:58 PM »
There is a way to disable it in Windows, but I just can't remember how to do it....

It used to be on the view tab of folder options. Now its a Group Policy thing, or a registry edit on the home editions.

http://superuser.com...-vista-and-windows-7

app103

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2013, 07:53 AM »
Hi App,
can you explain what happens when you select a bunch of stuff and hit "send-to-zipped folder"? That's all I do to create zips out of something. So if that somehow creates a thumbs.db file, can you advise what I should be doing instead?

That's not what creates them. Using thumbnail view in Explorer is what creates them.

Personally, I hate hidden files and folders and consider it a security risk to have things on my computer that I can't see, so I have hidden files and folders disabled. If you were to disable hidden files and folders, you'd be able to see these Thumbs.db files in the folders where they exist.

Now, once you can see them, when you select a bunch of stuff to zip, don't select that file.

But if you have a fast enough computer, I consider it better to turn off thumbnail caching so these Thumbs.db files are never created in the first place (see link provided by Stoic Joker or this one, then make sure you do a search of all files and folders for Thumbs.db and delete them all to clean your system ). That way when you zip up stuff with multiple subfolders, you don't have to worry about if there are any Thumbs.db files in there with them.

I don't use the built in Windows compressed folders feature. I use a 3rd party archiving application with shell integration (WinRAR). If I wanted to check an archive to see if it contained any Thumbs.db files and remove any I might find, I would just have to open in WinRAR (or click it, since I have that set as my default) and look in the list it displays. Then if I find any, select them and hit the "delete" button on the toolbar.

Screenshot - 4_26_2013 , 7_39_31 AM.png

You can pretty much do the same with almost every 3rd party archiver I have ever used (WinZip, 7-zip, etc.) It's pretty much an expected standard feature.

Oh, and those 2 Thumbs.db files showing in the screenshot? That's in a .zip file downloaded from this site.... One of a collection of sites that I frequently download from, that was the source of the irritation that prompted me to start this thread.  Some of the stuff I have acquired from various Envato marketplace sites, up to 30% of the total file size of the archives were Mac junk files. >:(

Krishean mentioned to me how much fun it is to look inside those Thumbs.db files with file recovery tools and find thumbnails that the original owner probably had no idea that they were sharing with the world.  ;D

So, for windows users, including those Thumbs.db files in a zip could be a privacy/security issue, too.

 :o

Could someone post some suggestions on how to do this? I never really understood the scope of Thumbs.db files (they're sorta magically something Windows does right?) Is there a simple viewer program that can look at them?

I don't know of any simple viewers that I could point you to, but as Krishean said, you could try some file recovery tools.


app103

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2013, 07:58 AM »
As always, Apple's junk outdoes that of Windows.

Not quite true. As far as I know, it's not as bad of a security issue as that of Windows...

Your Thumbs.db files and all the thumbnails of images from the folder it came from ending up in the hands of someone else isn't the only security issue you have to worry about. Someone else's ending up on your machine could be worse. Just imagine if they came from someone else that had images of child pornography stored in the same folder. You could end up in prison for someone else's crimes, with their thumbnail cache found on your machine, being used as evidence against you. You'd probably need a tech savvy lawyer, judge, and jury to beat charges like that, and we all know how often that combo occurs.  :huh:
« Last Edit: April 26, 2013, 06:48 PM by app103 »

x16wda

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Re: Tip of the Day: How to make your zip files less annoying
« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2013, 06:24 PM »
Thumbs_viewer works fine  :Thmbsup:
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