1256082 - 'Fonts' tab missing in the Inspector tool

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(DevTools :: Inspector, defect)

Description

[johngraciliano]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0
Build ID: 20160303134406

Steps to reproduce:

Start Firefox Developer Edition 47.0a2*
(make sure any page is open - about:home is fine)
Start the Developer Tools using F12 key.
Select the Inspector tab.
______
*NOTE:  I am using Windows 8.  This problem is may be OS specific.


Actual results:

The 'Fonts' tab that should appear between 'Computed' and 'Box Model' is missing.
(I noticed the problem since the 47 branch was alpha 1, i.e., Nightly, this problem is also carried now by the 48 branch).



Expected results:

The 'Fonts' tab should be visible/accessible.

Comment 1

[Alice0775 White]

The font pane has been disabled by Bug 1247723

Comment 2

[johngraciliano]

Silly me... 
so just go to about:config and set devtools.fontinspector.enable = true (the default currently false in Firefox 47+).
Thanks for the pointer.

Comment 3

[Prahlad Yeri]

@Alice0775 White
The premise of Bug 1247723 is incorrect. Some user raises a bug and says, "The font panel is not currently very useful". And you just disable the font panel?

Before doing so you should have given a consideration to the thought that how many people might be presently using that panel? And how will they feel after a sudden feature reduction post an upgrade?

Comment 4

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

(In reply to Prahlad Yeri from comment #3)
> @Alice0775 White
> The premise of Bug 1247723 is incorrect. Some user raises a bug and says,
> "The font panel is not currently very useful". And you just disable the font
> panel?
> 
> Before doing so you should have given a consideration to the thought that
> how many people might be presently using that panel? And how will they feel
> after a sudden feature reduction post an upgrade?

Alice0775 is just stating facts of the situation.  They were not involved in the decision to remove the panel.

In any case, please see bug 1278984 which offers a better way to access the panel again.

Comment 5

[Prahlad Yeri]

Alice0775 is just stating facts of the situation.  They were not involved in the decision to remove the panel.

Agreed. My comment wasn't directed towards Alice0775, but towards those involved in Bug 1247723. I also understand that I can re-enable the fonts dialog through about:config. My only concern was that if you suddenly remove a working feature based on telemetry report, it may come as a little shock to those using it.

Besides, telemetry reports aren't perfect, they are based on a data-collection module in browser which may also have bugs, right? For instance, being a Web Developer, I can safely say that the Fonts Panel is used by almost every Dev to look up which fonts are being used in the CSS. Then again, maybe only 5% of users who might be using firefox are actually developers, so maybe that telemetry could be right. But is it right to disable a feature just because only a minority uses it? Even that minority consists of your user-base, right?