Web Archives Viewer

Web Archives Viewer is a lightweight, yet useful application that enables you to explore the content of an archive you are about to download from the Internet. It works as an Internet Explorer plugin that you can use to take a look inside the RAR or ZIP file before saving it to your computer.

This can prove very useful, since the archive might contain files you already have. Web Archives Viewer can save you the trouble of downloading it, decompressing it and then exploring its contents with a dedicated program.

The application supports both HTTP and FTP protocols and works with both RAR or ZIP archives, but unfortunately, its compatibility range is limited to these two file types. Even so, this should be enough to the regular user, considering that these are the most used compression formats.

Once installed, it adds a new item in the context menu of Internet Explorer, enabling you to quickly access it. You can right-click on any link and open it with Web Archives Viewer, but if a RAR or ZIP archive is not identified, a popup message appears, saying that the format is not supported.

Web Archives Viewer displays the container structure in tree-view, for easier navigation, along with the size of each file and their creation date.

Not only that you can view a list of files included in the archive, but you can also open files using the associated program. And all this is done without downloading the archive, which is one of its major advantages.

Unfortunately, there is no edition of Web Archives Viewer that you can use with other browsers than Internet Explorer. It is a tool that can be of use to anyone, even if the range of supported archive formats is narrow.