well... the initial idea is that it should also be possible to right-click a folder, zip it and send it directly to a contact (on-line or when he/she comes back on-line, like the 'welcome msg from Plus!')... rather a challenge eh?
Concerning the zip possibility: of course it is not needed to develop its own compression-tool inside it... a linkage to something like WinZip or WinRAR (configurable, like with anti-virus programs in e-mail clients) should do the job.