It was high time WinRAR joined the Vista-compatible club, and this new beta accomplishes just that.
WinRAR 3.71 Beta 1 packs a host of changes, many of which aim to make the program more compliant to the Windows Vista standards. This is obvious if we take a look at the new help facility, which dropped the old HLP format in favor of the (not-so-new-anymore) CHM system, a change that does not affect the program’s functionality, but was demanded by the Vista guidelines.
The other changes are, however, more noticeable. WinRAR now complies to the new security model and makes use of the administrator permission dialogs Vista users are already accustomed with. Logfiles, themes, settings and regkeys are now stored by default in the %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder, which is the preferred method in Vista (still, users can specify a different, custom folder).
From the non-Vista-related changes crowd the following stand out: UDF support for the ISO format, Unicode support for filenames in ISO images, design changes in the “Extract” dialog and a stack overflow fix.
Downloads and useful links follow. The detailed list of changes in this release is also included.
*** DOWNLOADS AND OTHER LINKS ***
Read: My complete WinRAR Review
Download the WinRAR Vista Ultimate theme: 48×48 64×64 80×80 96×96
Download WinRAR 3.71 Beta 1 for Windows
(exe installer - 1.1MB, MD5 Hash: E8FAC88B68431EAB085513F72F480EF3)
Download RAR 3.71 Beta 1 for Linux
(.tar.gz package, 751KB)
Download RAR 3.71 Beta 1 for FreeBSD
(.tar.gz package, 700KB)
Download RAR 3.71 Beta 1 for MacOS X
(.tar.gz package, 357KB)
Browse: WinRAR FTP Directory (other languages, themes, older releases)
*** WHAT’S NEW IN WINRAR 3.71 BETA 1 ***
1. Numerous Windows Vista compatibility changes:
a) help format changed from old HLP to newer HTML based CHM;
b) GUI self-extracting modules attempt to request for
administrator permissions if they cannot create destination
folder under current user account;
c) Log file rar.log and WinRAR theme files are stored
in %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder instead of WinRAR program files folder.
Exported settings file settings.reg is also stored
in %APPDATA%\WinRAR folder by default, but it is possible to
select another folder in “Save WinRAR settings” and “Load WinRAR
settings” dialogs.
WinRAR searches for registration key and settings.reg
both in its program files folder and in %APPDATA%\WinRAR;
d) Vista compatibility changes in WinRAR shell integration.
2. Added support for ISO 13346 (UDF) file format. This format
is frequently used in ISO images of DVD disks.
3. Added Unicode support for ISO 9660 files, so WinRAR should
handle non-English file names in .iso files better.
4. Design changes in window displaying archiving and extraction
progress:
a) it provides more space for file names, allowing lengthy names;
b) it displays the current archive name in separate line,
allowing much longer archive names than before;
c) when archiving, it displays the current compression ratio
in separate line;
d) it can use both standard Windows and classic WinRAR progress bars.
Turn on “Windows progress bars” option in WinRAR “Settings/General”
dialog to use standard progress bars. By default this option is
on if some Windows visual style is active and off if Windows Classic
theme is selected.
Windows progress bars are two color only, so they do not indicate
the current compression ratio. But now the ratio is displayed
in separate line;
e) “Mode…” button moved to bottom of window.
5. GUI self-extracting modules support following command line
switches:
-d set the destination path
-p specify a password
-s silent mode, hide all
-s1 same as -s
-s2 silent mode, hide start dialog
-sp specify parameters for setup program
6. GUI self-extracting modules do not pass the entire command line
to setup program like they did in previous versions.
If you need to get access to entire command line of SFX archive,
parse sfxcmd environment variable which contains this command line.
7. New switch -sc[objects] allowing to select character
sets for archive comments and list files. It replaces -fcu switch
introduced in RAR 3.60, which was removed from list of supported
switches. Now you need to specify -scuc instead of -fcu to use
Unicode comments. Unlike -fcu, -sc also supports OEM and ANSI charset.
8. New “Save archive copy as…” command in “File” menu.
This command may be useful if you opened an archive from Internet
directly in WinRAR and then decided to save it on local disk.
9. “Word wrap” command added to “View” menu of WinRAR internal viewer,
so you can change the wrapping mode of already opened viewer window.
State of this option is not stored between viewing sessions.
If you need to change the default word wrap mode, use WinRAR
“Settings/Viewer” dialog.
10. Buttons “Up” and “Down” added to “Organize profiles” dialog.
Using these buttons you can change position of selected profile
in the list.
11. Operation progress is displayed when adding the recovery record.
12. If WinRAR is minimized to tray and mouse is over its icon,
WinRAR diplays a message about the current operation progress.
In previous versions it included only percent done, now it also
contains the time left information.
13. Console RAR displays “Calculating the control sum” message
when calculating CRC32 control sum for newly created RAR volume.
Previous versions also calculated the volume control sum,
but did it silently.
14. Archives history list in “File” menu allows Unicode names,
providing more reliable support for non-English archive names.
15. Stack overflow vulnerability has been corrected in password
processing module of console RAR and UnRAR. GUI WinRAR is not
affected. We are thankful to the iDEFENSE LABS for reporting this bug.
