Visual Studio and Azure web application tip: preview changes to files and compare changes in files

Visual Studio provides a convenient way to publish your ASP.NET web application easily to Azure. Today's quick tip about previewing changes before doing the actual publish and comparing file changes before you click the Publish button.

When you use Visual Studio's Publish command, the final step before the actual operation is the preview stage. This lists all the files that will be added, updated or removed from Azure during the publish operation.

This list is useful in itself, but there's a nice little extra that might not be aware of: if you double-click a file on the preview list, Visual Studio displays a Diff window comparing the local file to the one on the server. This works in the same way as you can compare files in version control.

Interestingly enough, you can also double-click the right mouse button to view the diff, but there's no popup menu, just a double-click.

Hope this helps!