1299744 - Button to enable grid highlighters in the page (behind a pref, to get users to test this)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools :: Inspector, defect)

Description

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

Most of the work going on these days in bug 1181227 is centered around creating a grid highlighter: something that appears in the page, and displays grid lines, areas, gaps, etc.

The second step after this will be to create some UI in the toolbox (most probably a new layout sidebar panel).

In the meantime though, we don't have anything in devtools to show the highlighter. So we can't have people try it out and give feedback.

In this bug, I'd like us to quickly land a very simple button in the inspector that, once clicked, would just toggle the highlighter on all grids in the page, if there are any.

We don't want such a button to stay on the long term, so this would just be a temporary solution for us to start testing with more users. Because of this, I think we should introduce a pref to hide this button by default.

- Add a pref like devtools.inspector.gridButton.enabled, set to false by default
- If the pref is true, display a button in the inspector toolbar (next to the + button, on the left side)
- When clicked, look for elements with display:grid on the current page, and display the highlighter for them

Comment 1

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

Helen: does this sound good to you? Again, this would be just a temporary thing until we have the actual grid inspector UI. I think this could help in the meantime.

Comment 2

[Helen V. Holmes (:helenvholmes) (:✨)]

(In reply to Patrick Brosset <:pbro> from comment #1)
> Helen: does this sound good to you? Again, this would be just a temporary
> thing until we have the actual grid inspector UI. I think this could help in
> the meantime.

I'm wary of introducing a button in a place where we ultimately won't keep it. Potch has been working pretty hard with the grid addon with this philosophy in mind: when you introduce a feature and then remove it, people get upset.

Since we ultimately are trying to find out what paradigm we want with the inspect-element picker, I think the feature should be introduced through there.

Comment 3

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

Ok thanks. Closing as WONTFIX for now. Let's talk about this again later.