1338768 - Developer tools in a separate window does not get in background when clicking "Node Picker" and does not get focus when choosing a node via Node Picker

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: Inspector, enhancement, P2)

Description

[bhdzllr]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:51.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/51.0
Build ID: 20170125094131

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Developer Tools in a separate window (do not pin onto current Firefox window)
2. Click "Node Picker" (Developer Tools should now go into the background)
3. Try to select a node (Click the Firefox window to lose focus on Developer Tools and then it is possible to select a node)
4. Developer Tools do not get focus and stay in background after selecting a node (however the node is selected)


Actual results:

Developer Tools window stays in foreground on clicking "Node Picker" and stays in background after selecting a node.


Expected results:

Developer Tools window should go to background on clicking "Node Picker" and should come to foreground after selecting a node.

Comment 1

[bhdzllr]

Tested on OS X 10.11 and Windows 7

Comment 2

[Loic]

I think the 1st behavior (dev tools going background when clicking on the node picker icon) was present in the past versions of Firefox, so it regressed probably somewhere.

For the tools coming back foreground, I don't think this behavior has existed.

Comment 3

[Loic]

Detached dev tools staying foreground when clicking on the node picker appeared after bug 1245654:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/pushloghtml?fromchange=6226f2e8a41b637c428862cf6931462bf59938ff&tochange=f9e4a56281d86c553b8cedd9cb86025813946ec0

Patrick, is it the expected behaviour?

Comment 4

[bhdzllr]

If you pick a node you want details about it.
So I think it is the expected behaviour and it is also exactly what Firebug does.

If developer tools is attached on the current firefox tab it behaves like this.
You can't really see it but Developer Tools have focus after selecting a node (maybe never lost it), because you can switch nodes with key up/down.

Comment 5

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

There has been some functionality changes in bug 1213680 and then bug 1245654, and now when you engage the node picker (either with ctrl+shift+C or by clicking on the icon), the content window is *not* focused by default.
I think we should keep this.

I agree, though, that once an element is picked, you want to go back to the devtools window (and comment 4 is right, if devtools is attached, then that's what happens).
This is also what Chrome does.

So we should fix this.

Comment 6

[bhdzllr]

I understand that there are overlaps here with the reports you mentioned, but I don't really understand why to keep it this way. If a user clicks the node picker, what else can be done with it except picking nodes on the content window? User would save one click.

As I read in the bug reports there are a lot of users who expect instant node picking with the Inspector Shortcut. But Inspector is not Node Picker?

Comment 7

[irfan6]

Hi,

This is a feature request, like we have in "Chorme",
I recently swithced from Ch rome to FF,

So when we chose an element ( by ctrl+Shift+C), the dev tools should come back on top. that's the point of getting it in separate window mode.

Otherwise you have to switch windows back and forth to get Dev tools in view..

Hope it is understandable..

Comment 8

[irfan6]

In my case what is happening is :

Environment: 79.0 (64-bit)

What's happening is:

we do Ctrl+Shift+C and select an element,

Now if the developer tools is in separate window mode, you donot get it back to focus upon selecting an item , which is what we have in Chorme ..