1444306 - Consider renaming some of the DevTools tab bar panels

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Brian Birtles (:birtles)]

This one will be a controversial one and probably needs some user research but I wonder if we could consider renaming some of the Developer toolbar tabs to make them more approachable to new users?

For example,

* Style Editor - Could we just call this "Stylesheets"? It's useful for more than just editing after all (I use it mostly for reading stylesheets)

* Debugger - Debugging what? You can debug style, performance, network etc. too. And what if I just want to read the JS and not debug it? Call it "Scripts"? (Needs to be weighed up against the fact that all other browsers call it "Debugger".)

* Inspector - Call it "Elements" like every other browser? (I'd actually like to call it "HTML" -- "SVG" if you're looking at SVG -- but I'm pretty certain I'm the only person in the world who thinks that. It's just part of my quest to make DevTools approachable for CodePen users.)

I suspect this isn't the best forum for discussing this but I'm filing this bug to ensure we have this conversation at some point.

Comment 1

[Brian Birtles (:birtles)]

If we do decide to do this, it might be an opportunity to refresh some of the icons too.

For example the { } icon used for "Style editor" could just as easily represent JS as it could CSS.

Comment 2

[Julien Wajsberg [:julienw]]

I believe this is a good candidate for a discussion in a RFC: https://github.com/devtools-html/rfcs/issues

My one cent is I mostly agree with this, but for Inspector. I use it a lot to study and debug a page's Layout, and this is where most of our new Layout and Design tools are actually located. I believe the name should reflect this, even if I don't have a good idea at the moment.

Comment 3

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

(In reply to Julien Wajsberg [:julienw] from comment #2)
> I believe this is a good candidate for a discussion in a RFC:
> https://github.com/devtools-html/rfcs/issues
I disagree. The RFC panel today only contains DevTools engineers. This, however, is a decision that needs to involve feedback from other parts of the organization: UX, Product, User Research.

Comment 4

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

Sorry I pressed send before I was done.
Having a decision making process like the RFC one is great. i just think the one DevTools uses currently isn’t well adapted for this type of change.

Comment 5

[tbodt]

Is there a reason there's no Sources/Resources tab that shows all stylesheets, scripts, images, HTML files, and everything else that was requested; like Chrome and Safari have? Network tab is not what I want; 1) you can't click on something and immediately see its content and set breakpoints and 2) it's completely blank unless devtools was open while the page was loading. And not Debugger either, that only shows scripts.

Comment 6

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

(In reply to tblodt from comment #5)
> Is there a reason there's no Sources/Resources tab that shows all
> stylesheets, scripts, images, HTML files, and everything else that was
> requested; like Chrome and Safari have? Network tab is not what I want; 1)
> you can't click on something and immediately see its content and set
> breakpoints and 2) it's completely blank unless devtools was open while the
> page was loading. And not Debugger either, that only shows scripts.

No particular reason...  It just hasn't been a priority yet.  We've talked about offering something like this at some stage, similar to the "Application" panel in Chrome.

Comment 7

[tbodt]

I personally think it would make a big difference in DevTools usability (familiarity and all). Should I file a new bug for that or something?

Comment 8

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

(In reply to tblodt from comment #7)
> I personally think it would make a big difference in DevTools usability
> (familiarity and all). Should I file a new bug for that or something?

Yes, please feel free to file!  I don't think our plans for this are captured in bugs yet.

Comment 9

[tbodt]

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (use ni?) from comment #8)
> (In reply to tblodt from comment #7)
> > I personally think it would make a big difference in DevTools usability
> > (familiarity and all). Should I file a new bug for that or something?
> 
> Yes, please feel free to file!  I don't think our plans for this are
> captured in bugs yet.

OK, I've filed bug 1444464 for this.