Updates
A short record of what has changed, newest first. Small fixes mostly, and now and then a note about what is coming next.
- Marked only what was added when a revised clause grew much longer than the original
- Stopped stray blank lines appearing in the Revised copy inside a quotation
- Kept Clear both and the pane erasers working when a pane holds nothing but a table
- Kept Help opening in a new tab when the only thing pasted is a table
- Said which quotation or list was taken away when the clause inside it stayed
- Marked the table as gone when a pasted table comes back as plain paragraphs
- Scrolled sideways to a change in a wide table when stepping through the changes
- Made the controls in a pane head big enough to tap on a tablet
- Stopped the Copy panel covering the pane beside it on a narrower window
- Told you when a feedback address cannot be replied to, instead of losing the message
- Gave the feedback form an answer when the spam check cannot be reached
- Added a page about the desktop version, and a list to join to hear when it arrives
- Said on the feedback page whether a message was sent, which it never used to
- Showed one pane at a time on a phone, with a row of names above it to switch
- Put the change arrows and Copy in a bar along the bottom on a phone
- Gave a phone the whole screen for the clause instead of a quarter of it
- Kept the three columns on a tablet held upright, which used to drop to a stacked page
- Made the text larger on a phone, so tapping into a pane no longer zooms the page
- Asked which version to keep when a pasted clause carries tracked changes
- Kept a pasted table as a table, with changes marked inside the cell they happened in
- Kept the table when the redline is copied out, whichever format you choose
- Made Copy one control in the Redline pane, offering four formats and what each lands as
- Split copying out into a format for email and one that becomes tracked changes in Word
- Stopped one change being marked as two around a space neither version changed
- Marked a paragraph turned into a heading, or a list renumbered, as a formatting change
- Kept a struck block inside the quotation or list it was removed from
- Struck a quotation removed from around a clause that stayed, instead of passing it over
- Kept a paragraph removed between two that were joined into one in its own place
- Added a Help page: what the tool can do, and the things it only offers once you paste
- Said what survives a paste, and what a redline looks like in the software it lands in
- Replaced the view switcher with a control that expands one pane to fill the screen
- Added a way to see the revised text on its own
- Added a way to join the wrapped lines when a clause is pasted from a PDF
- Made Shift-Enter start a new line inside a paragraph
- Stopped a replaced phrase being struck in two pieces around a word that stayed
- Stopped a whole phrase being struck when only the full stop or comma after it changed
- Marked a sentence added at the end of a paragraph without striking the word before it
- Fixed a letter vanishing where struck text meets inserted text on the selected change
- Showed which change you are on beside the arrows that step through them
- Made it clearer which pane you are typing in
- Lined the three panes up so their text starts at the same height
- Kept the change summary and its arrows in view while scrolling a long clause
- Evened up the spacing and margins across the panes
- Made clicking anywhere in an editable pane put the cursor there
- Added a way to clear one side without clearing both
- Improved how a clause is matched to its earlier version
The first version
Redline Pad is live. Paste the original version of a clause on one side and the revised version on the other, and the redline appears as you type: insertions underlined, deletions struck through where they stood.
I built it for the job that comes up several times a day and does not deserve a document-comparison workflow — a clause out of an email, a paragraph somebody rewrote overnight. For a whole contract, Word's own Compare is still the right tool, and the comparison pages here say so.
Everything runs in your browser. There is no upload, no account, and nothing you paste is stored anywhere.
What comes next depends partly on what people tell me. If something is wrong, or if there is something you keep needing, the feedback page reaches me.