You are here

Home › Installing Theatre Manager › Editing/Upgrading Web Pages › Useful HTML editing tools

Comparing HTML Pages with BBedit/TextWrangler

Subscribe to Syndicate
Fri, 05/21/2010 - 18:57 — Doug

On a Macintosh, you can use a tool like BBedit or Text Wrangler to compare two sets of web pages and move changes from one page to another. (Text Wrangler can do this comparison and its free, BBedit is a paid product from the same company).

You can do a comparison on either:

  • A subset of pages provided with each upgrade to identify the key differences, or
  • you can compare your entire htdocs folder on the Apache server with the most recent htdocs folder supplied by Arts Management.

In either case, the approach is:

  1. Make a copy of your current htdocs folder on your apache server and copy it to your computer.

    By copying the pages, you can make changes to the web pages and test them in a test environment.

  2. Obtain the full set of web pages, or the subset that is part of the current release.

    If you are jumping a few versions, you will need the web pages changes between the current version you are running and the latest release, or you can simply download a full copy of the latest web pages.

    Use BBedit or TextWrangler (or similar file comparison tool) to compare all files in a folder.

  3. Start BBedit or TextWrangler and then go to Search->Find Differences.

    In the find differences window that opens, put the names of the old and new htdocs folders as per the picture below and click Compare.

  4. Choose which changes should be merged into your web pages.

    This shows you the list of files that are different (bottom left) and under that, the actual differences in the files. Clicking on any one difference will show you where in the file the differences are and you can apply them (or not) in either direction. Repeat this decision making for all files that are different.

    If you are copying over a customized change from your organization or updating an existing customized pages with new code, the page will need to be saved into the tmCustom folder.

  5. If there are new files, copy them into the right place.
  6. Test the web pages before moving them into the live web site.
  7. Upgrade Theatre Manager to match the version of the web pages.
  8. Start the web listeners.
  9. Do a final test purchase using the live web pages.