In our latest beta release of ExamDiff Pro 3.5, the biggest change is the addition of many new features concerning plug-ins. In this blog post, I will go over four new plug-in features.

The biggest, and most noticeable, of these is the option to install 10 plug-ins automatically. When you install ExamDiff Pro, at one point you will come to a message box asking your permission to install plug-ins, as shown below; if you say yes, ten of the most important plug-ins available (see our list of ExamDiff Pro plugins) will automatically be downloaded and installed. Neat!

Note: All of the plug-ins that are installed with ExamDiff Pro are free to use, and some are open-source; we provide the source code for those plug-ins whose license (most notably, GPL) requires it.

Two more improvements are the ability to compare archives (i.e. ZIP files) with directories, and the ability to specify default remote file and directory plug-ins (these are set by default if you choose to automatically install plug-ins). Now, whenever ExamDiff Pro sees that you are trying to compare a remote (i.e. HTTP or FTP) file or directory, it will automatically use the appropriate default remote plug-in. The Compare dialog screenshot below shows both of these features in action.

Last, but not least, you are now given the option to cancel a plug-in in operation: the following dialog is displayed whenever a plug-in takes longer than a second to complete its task. Clicking Cancel will stop the plug-in immediately and attempt to compare the files or directories without plug-ins. This comes in handy when a plug-in takes a long time, and you decide to stop comparison.

We at PrestoSoft have always supported education, and we know that many of our users are students and teachers, who use ExamDiff Pro and FtpVC for educational purposes, such as research projects and gradebook management. For this reason, we now offer a 20% discount to those using our software for educational means. To qualify for this discount, please e-mail us with your name, the name of your educational institution, and your reason for purchasing our software. We do not require a copy of your ID, but in order for us to verify that you are indeed from an academic institution, we would like you to e-mail us from your academic e-mail address.

We've decided to take a small break from our schedule to work on freeware ExamDiff, and have released ExamDiff 1.7. The biggest change, and one that you would notice immediately upon starting ExamDiff, is that all the program's old 16-color icons and toolbar buttons have been replaced with new true-color ones, the majority of them taken directly from ExamDiff Pro. The reason we did this is that we wanted to keep a consistent look and feel between ExamDiff and ExamDiff Pro, so that upgrading would be a much easier experience.