iShrink, Therefore I Am
Posted by Ammon Beckstrom on 03/3/08 in Featured, Giveaways, Utilities
For as long as hard drives have been bogged down by large files, file compression apps have been there to help reduce the size of the clutter. New from developer CodeFuzion comes iShrink 3.03 and it is ready to reduce the size of your files and free up some disk space.
At first glance iShrink sports a clean and simple drag-and-drop interface. Drag any file you want to compress onto the app and voila–instant shrinkage! Because iShrink supports batch jobs, you can drag multiple files onto to the app at the same time and each file will be compressed individually. Conversely, you can drag one or more compressed files onto iShrink and the contents of the archive will be extracted.
If you’re averse to standard zip files or if you’re feeling particularly geeky, you can easily change iShrink’s default archive settings to have it shrink your files in the venerable tar with either standard Unix compression (.tar.z), gzip (.tgz), or b2zip (.tbz2). iShrink archives (.ishr) compress multiple files into one. An added benefit of iShrink files is that when you drag an .ishr file onto the app, you can search for specific files within it and add or delete files from the archive.
Good news for Growl fans! Notifications, a recent addition to iShrink, can be turned on or off via the preference pane to notify you when your jobs are complete.
And now for the final verdict . . . iShrink is a well designed file compression utility. It looks good and I genuinely like iShrink however, it doesn’t feel complete. It has a few little quirks that I haven’t gotten used to. First, iShrink has an “File” menu in the menubar but it doesn’t have any listings. Nothing, nada, zilch. Why have this menu then? The other issue I have is with the search feature for iShrink’s native .ishr files. It seems to only search from the beginning of the file name. Meaning that if I entered “Things” into the Search field it would return as results “Things to do.pdf” and “Things about me.pdf”, but not a file named “25 Things.pdf.” If you find yourself working with an abundance of compressed files and are looking for an elegant solution, iShrink might be just what you’re looking for. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this app as it continues to mature with hopes that the search function evolves with future releases.
A free trial is available from CodeFuzion and a license can be purchased for the very reasonable price of $15. The trial version allows you 10 compressions and a unlimited number of decompressions before requiring you to register.
Time to get your swag on! Mark at CodeFuzion has graciously given us 5 licenses to giveaway. You should know the drill by now, but here goes anyways. If you want to get your hands on a free license, download a trial of iShrink and then leave a comment below to let us know what you think would make iShrink better. The contest ends on March 10th, 2008 at midnight EST and winners will be announced shortly thereafter. So leave your comments now and get entered to win this slick app.
Guest 
Article Author 
Contributor
+1 
Subscribe to MacApper's Full Page Feeds
Subscribe to MacApper's Podcast
20 Comment(s)