1742761 - Experiment showing `DEVTOOLS` in tab secondary label when DevTools toolbox is opened for a tab

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe]]

Attachment: Paused DEVTOOLS secondary label

We got report in the past of people saying they were losing track of the tab they opened devtools in, and that they would benefit to have some kind of indicator to identify such tab (I certainly came across situation where I would have benefited from this as well)

Since MR1 and the new tab design, there's a secondary label in tabs, that is used mostly for media status (playing, picture in picture, muted, …)
Those labels are declared here: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/aa8c75b83f636948f708986173965c84cae8c25f/browser/base/content/tabbrowser-tab.js#31-37

I feel like it would be nice to have a DEVTOOLS label that would be displayed when a toolbox is opened on a given tab.
This could even reflect the debugger "paused" state, showing a small icon and a different color for the secondary label (see screenshot) ?

Let's discuss about this idea

Comment 1

[Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe]]

Jared, I think you worked on those secondary label, do you know if such idea would be reasonable? Is there people we should talk to/get approval from before investigating the implementation details?

Comment 2

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Hey Nicolas, yes that idea would be achieveable.

We would just need to make a decision which has priority, and if the developer is working with media playback then they could lose some data. Ultimately, I think the presence of DevTools being open should have priority over media controls.

I actually think it would be OK to use the same play/pause icons that media controls use, since those icons are designed to work well with the Proton UI and I wouldn't want to deviate.

We can run this idea by Romain to get his feedback. Romain, are you OK with adding this extra information for DevTools users?

Comment 3

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Great to see that we could extend the 2nd line of text capability - this was the original intention.
I agree that DevTools being open should have priority over media controls.
Icon-wise I'm unsure since we don't currently use icons in this area - Aaron is having an icon in this area something you'd support and in that case do you have strong opinions on the icon itself?

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Upon coming back to this, I would like to tweak my earlier response.

We shouldn't add an icon within this second line. We could add an overlay icon like we do for pinned muted tabs, or we could replace the favicon with the icon. Putting an icon in the second line of text will add unnecessary complexity.

Comment 5

[Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe]]

I think we can only have the label to start with, we can always think if the icon makes sense later.

Comment 6

[Itiel]

One thing to keep in mind here is that the second line is not available for all locales...

Comment 7

[Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe]]

(In reply to Itiel from comment #6)

One thing to keep in mind here is that the second line is not available for all locales...

Oh really? Are the PLAYING/MUTED label simply not displayed?

Comment 8

[Itiel]

(In reply to Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe] from comment #7)

(In reply to Itiel from comment #6)

One thing to keep in mind here is that the second line is not available for all locales...

Oh really? Are the PLAYING/MUTED label simply not displayed?

Yeah, see https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D109842

Comment 9

[Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe]]

Okay that's good to know. From the bug it seems like the issue was about localized strings not being legible in some locale.
Here I was wondering if we could have the string not localized to begin with, so only devtools, as if we'd use the full string, even in English (so [Web] Developer Tools) would be too long to fit in the tab width.

Comment 10

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'DevTools::Debugger' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 11

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:jdescottes, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 12

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

I think the question was answered in comment 4 and comment 5: no icon needed.