File Differences Viewer

Last modified: May 26, 2026

Introduction

The File Differences Viewer is a dialog box in Studio Pro that displays text differences between two versions of a file or two text values. It opens as a modal dialog box and shows additions, deletions, and modifications with color-coded highlighting.

File Differences Viewer showing a side-by-side comparison with color-coded additions and deletions

Accessing the File Differences Viewer

The File Differences Viewer opens automatically in the following scenarios:

  • Changes pane:
    • When you view changes at the object level and double-click a text property row, the File Differences Viewer opens to show the old and new values of that property.
    • When you review disk changes (such as Java source code or widget files), you can right-click a modified file and select Compare with original, or double-click it, to open the File Differences Viewer showing the differences between your working copy and the last committed version.
  • Comparison pane – When you compare property values or files in the Comparison pane, clicking the Compare button opens the File Differences Viewer to show the differences.

Toolbar

The File Differences Viewer toolbar contains the following buttons:

Button Action
Refresh Reloads the file contents from disk. This is useful if you make changes to the file while the dialog box is open. This button is disabled when comparing text values.
Split/Inline toggle Switches between split view (side-by-side) and inline view (unified).

Reading the Diff

The File Differences Viewer uses the following visual indicators to show differences:

  • Green background – Lines or words that were added in the newer version.
  • Red background – Lines or words that were removed from the older version.
  • Word-level highlighting – Within changed lines, individual words that differ are highlighted with a darker shade to pinpoint exact changes.

In the split view, the older version is shown on the left and the newer version is shown on the right, with column headers Older and Newer.

In the inline view, both versions are merged into a single column with the header Differences, where removed lines appear above added lines.

Line numbers are displayed for both sides to help you locate changes in the file.

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