The Firefox setup file is compressed and uses a very efficient compression algorithm and would be difficult to get better compression by using compressed files such as zip.

For example the setup file for English US version of Firefox 3.6.13 is about 8.2MB. Using standard compression options for zip files, the Firefox application would be about 11.8MB. I played around with compression options but could not reduce the size much below 10MB

Mozilla used to offer Zip files, but they stopped making them available for releases a few years ago.

thanx Tony

On the otherhand some times it ipossible to download a file with an exe extntion so would you plz consder the option of making it a zip or rar file thanx again

The Windows version is compressed with 7-Zip while if you were to do a full size update in Firefox the file is actually larger since the mar file is not compressed.

Mozilla has not provided ANY .zip releases of Firefox ever since the old Firefox 1.0.1 version (released end of Feb 2005). It was found that Firefox can be crash prone if users installed the .zip and installer versions over each other (mixing) when they should have been kept separate or installed in a clean folder.

Mozilla has no plans to make .zip version of Firefox releases available (For Windows) again whether it be the upcoming 4.0 or older.

By the way the .zip equivalent is actually bigger (by some 3mb) and not smaller than the setup compressed with 7-Zip anyways.