See what changed at a glance — introducing REFLO’s comparison modes

In the last post I talked about the timeline, the foundation everything else in REFLO sits on. Today I want to go into the feature that blooms on top of that timeline: comparison modes. I’ll walk through why we built it, how it works today, and how we plan to keep developing it.

A moment almost everyone has had

You’re looking at a file that’s been through several rounds of revision, and someone asks, “So what exactly changed this time?”

What usually happens next is this. You open the previous version and the latest version separately, put two windows side by side, and glance back and forth. Your eyes go left and right: “I think this button color changed a bit… did it?” A logo that moved a few pixels is almost impossible to see no matter how hard you stare. For documents, at least you can check the text with Track Changes — but layout and design have no such thing.

Developers have a great tool called a “diff” that paints every line of code red and green. Images and design files have nothing like that. In the end, a person has to compare two screens by eye — a game of spot-the-difference.

That frustration is why we built comparison modes

As I said last time, REFLO first solved “getting it recorded safely.” Thanks to the timeline, versions started stacking up. Then, once we’d built that, we realized another problem was still there.

No matter how well versions were saved, figuring out what changed between two moments was still on the person. Opening files, putting windows side by side, squinting — that process itself hadn’t gotten any easier. Once we saw that “we have the record, but understanding the record is still hard,” we started building comparison modes.

What comparison modes are after

> What if, instead of explaining the answer to “what changed?”, we could just show it?

The purpose of comparison modes fits in that one sentence. You shouldn’t have to struggle to describe a change; the moment you look, you should understand. REFLO prepared not one way to do that, but four. Some changes show up best side by side, some when stacked, some when color points them out.

REFLO’s four comparison modes

Split is available for free right away; Overlay, Heatmap, and Blink are available in Pro.

1. Split — side by side

Like before-and-after interior photos printed next to each other in a magazine, you split the screen in half — or adjust the ratio — and place two versions left and right. Instead of opening two windows and moving your gaze back and forth, you compare inside one screen, moving only your eyes. It’s the most intuitive when overall composition or layout has changed.

2. Overlay — stack and peel back

Think of the before-and-after sliders you often see in cosmetics or clinic ads. The two versions are stacked in exactly the same place, and when you drag the slider left or right, one version peels away like a curtain and the other is revealed. You feel what changed at the exact same spot, which is especially useful for tiny position shifts or color changes.

3. Heatmap — pointed out in color

Think of a rainfall map in a weather forecast, or a thermal camera. Areas that actually changed between the two versions are highlighted in color. You don’t have to scan the whole screen from end to end; look where the color is, and you’ve found the change. On design files with lots of layers and pixels, it’s especially reassuring when you wonder, “Did I miss something?” For documents like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, we help with text comparison instead of a visual heatmap.

4. Blink (Flicker in the app) — find it by flashing

The principle is similar to the spot-the-difference games you played as a kid. When two versions flash back and forth quickly, the eye naturally filters out what didn’t change and what did change stands out. Even a tiny shift in color tone that’s hard to notice side by side pops immediately with Blink (Flicker).

Comparison starts on the timeline

All four comparisons start by picking two points on the timeline I introduced last time. Because the timeline has been recording versions one after another, you can freely pick today’s version and yesterday’s, or before and after you sent something to a client, and compare right away. If the timeline is in charge of the “record,” comparison modes turn that record into “understanding.”

What’s next

I don’t think the four modes today fit every situation perfectly. How you detect and show “change” inevitably differs a bit by file format, so we plan to keep refining comparison accuracy especially across different formats.

And when collaboration lands, the uses for comparison modes will naturally widen. Teammates comparing each other’s versions, or checking what’s different before bringing together work that split into several forks — I think today’s comparison modes will play an important role there too. We’ll invite a small number of teams to use it together, validate it, and then polish it for a proper release.

Closing

Comparison modes are the feature that, while using REFLO, most often makes you think, “Oh, this is convenient.” You don’t have to explain in words; you just show it. That’s what this feature wants to do.

In the next post I’ll continue introducing more of REFLO’s features. Thank you for reading.