Quirk: DIFFzilla (r-ball)

[skywise]

I needed to diff two FTP files that I had in the current buffer, so I fired up DIFFzilla used the 'b' buttons next to the Path fields to assign the appropriate files and hit OK and got the following error:

'ftp://192.168.1.125/blah.txt' is not a valid path.

B-b-but... I'm looking right at it... I selected it from the buffer menu?!?  Wha?!

After wasting several minutes doing stupid stuff (I assumed I had lost the FTP connection), turns out that I had last used DIFFzilla to scan 2 FOLDERS on the previous day and it was still set that way.  Of course the search wouldn't allow these 2 files in a FOLDER diff... Duh!

The feature to remember the last settings is fine and I appreciate the simplicity of the Diff form...but would it be possible to change the error message to something more descriptive like 'blah is not a valid folder' or 'blah is not a valid folder for folder search' or maybe not let the user select a file from the buffer to enter in the field when doing a folder search, etc?

Thanks

[Dan]

I would suggest that on the Options Tab you select "Dialog Setup", and then check "Expert mode setup dialog" on.  This will cause the radio buttons to follow whatever you fill in the dialog for.

This way you can bring up the Diff setup dialog, fill in filenames or directory paths, and it will just work.

[skywise]

Ahh... very nice.  Thank you.

(Didn't that use to be on by default?)

[Dan]

Yes.  We changed it mostly because of this case:

• You want to compare two folders and set the radio buttons appropriately
• You start to type a folder name, but decide to click the "..." button
• If you stumbled across a filename during the first two steps, the radio button changed back to "Compare Two Files", and "..." brings up an Open File dialog

The reverse case can happen too.

I've always just gone into the dialog typing what I want using either aliases or completion, so this didn't affect me.  But it wasn't really obvious that you could just fill in the dialog and it would figure out what you meant.

[skywise]

Oh yeah... I ran into that same problem too...


I just attributed that to a Pebcak issue.   

[skywise]

Follow up to this -

If you have "Expert mode setup dialog" checked you get the following quirky behavior:

If you select Compare Two Folders, the radio button will change then change right back to Compare Two Files if two files are listed in the path fields.

This makes sense EXCEPT you cannot use the "browse" button to select a file path.  It will only let you choose a file.  If you type the path in first, THEN the selection will change and THEN you can use the "browse" button to select the file path but NOT a filename (unless you type in a name first).

What might work better here is to add a "folder" icon to the right of the "..." and "B" buttons which would always bring up a file path (directory) selection dialog (or allow the file pick dialog to select a folder as well)