
You can also drop files onto Kaleidoscope’s Dock icon, send them via Services from the Finder, or, again via Services, from a right-click on text in any OS X application. Second, clicking on the area will open a standard Open dialog to manually pick files from the Finder. There are two subtle touches at play here: firstly, the graphics of the “Drag Files Here” window include a folder, a text file, and an image, suggesting to the user the kind of comparisons that are possible with Kaleidoscope.
Once dismissed, Kaleidoscope will offer the easiest way to drop two files into the app: drag them onto the main window. Some may argue that UI walkthroughs aren’t the way to go these days, but I liked Kaleidoscope’s. Upon first run, the app will show a beautiful, interactive walkthrough with “zoomable sections” for buttons and other UI elements, accompained by text to better explain the functionalities of the app.
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In spite of the many options available either from the menu bar or as keyboard shortcuts, I find Kaleidoscope’s interface surprisisngly clean and focused on what really matters: content.īlack Pixel wanted to ensure people would be able to easily send files to Kaleidoscope, because, admittedly, the whole concept of “comparing and merging differences” can sound fairly extraneous to the less geek among Mac users. Kaleidoscope presents two files in a single window that shows file A on the right and file B on the left. In addition to finding text added in file B (colored in green) and deleted from file A (colored in red), Kaleidoscope’s tracking algorithm also finds parts of text that have been changed between two files, coloring them in purple. Kaleidoscope calculates what is known as a diff between file A (the older one) and file B (the newer one). With Kaleidoscope, I found the process of comparing text visually more appealing and simplified. Normally, I would have gone with opening the text files in two separate TextEdit windows, reading them side by side.
After I sent my draft to Glenn and Marco, Glenn got back to me with an edited copy that had a couple of fixes that substantially improved my piece it looked great, but still – I wanted to compare those changes. I published an article in issue 7 of The Magazine a few weeks back. However, there have been a couple of occasions in which I’ve appreciated the features offered by Kaleidoscope, and I thought it’d be worth to mention them. Kaleidoscope is perfectly suited for people who don’t work like me: people who take photographs and edit them, who organize files and backups carefully with a precise folder structure, and who send bits of the same text back and forth with another person. If anything, I just read my articles over and over until I’m happy with them.
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The only images I deal with on a daily basis are screenshots, because the photos I take go straight to Dropbox and I never edit them my backup consists of a full copy of my MacBook Air mirrored to a couple of external drives with SuperDuper and, I primarily work with text, but I don’t have an editor that sends me revisions of my writing on a daily basis. I’m not the best person to write an in-depth review of Kaleidoscope. If you’ve been looking for a file comparison tool that is equally gorgeous and powerful, I wouldn’t hesitate to go buy Kaleidoscope right now.

KALEIDOSCOPE DROPS REVIEWS SOFTWARE
It is a powerful piece of software to spot differences between text, images, or folders, and merge changes in seconds. Kaleidoscope 2, an advanced file comparison app by Black Pixel, is out today.
