If you use archives frequently, a utility called Springy ($18 shareware, Dragan Milic) could make your life a good bit easier. Springy can read, extract and create archives in all the most common Mac OS X formats, including DMG, TAR, ZIP and SIT. It’s a slimmer, well-designed, less expensive alternative to Stuffit Standard ($49.99) and the venerable Stuffit Deluxe ($79.99). Stuffit Expander, which can expand archives but can’t create them, remains free for the download.

One of Springy’s handy features is that it can view what’s in an archive without taking the extra time to extract it. This can be a great time-saver. If you find what you’re looking for, Springy can extract it with a double click. While this will work with any of the archive formats that Springy supports, I found it most useful in working with those disk image (DMG) files so common in OS X.

Creating an archive is almost as easy. Just hit Command-N and a dialog box appears asking you for a name for your new archive, which file format you want to use and where you want to save it. Once created, a column-view window opens. You can add files to the archive simply by dragging and dropping them on the window, just the way Mac users like it.

The ability to avoid extracting all the files when re-opening an archive saves more time when you want to modify an archive by renaming, adding or deleting files.

Perhaps the most compelling feature Springy offers is Contextual menus. During installation you drop a plug-in into the appropriate folder to make Springy available in the Finder at all times, whether the program is running or not. When you right click (or option-click, if you prefer), Springy’s archiving magic appears at the bottom of the menu. Now that’s convenient.

Springy is a Universal binary app, so runs equally well on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. The free trial version has most of the functionality of the paid registered version but the limitations -- primarily that archives cannot be larger than 50 megabytes -- strongly encourage users to pay up.