37594 - Ctrl-Alt-T to show networking debug info

Status: REOPENED

(DevTools :: Netmonitor, enhancement, P3)

Description

[yoel]

This is a 4.x farity feature request, it is used as a debugging tool. 

Entering ctrl-alt-t displays the following:
how many connections are waiting for an open socket
how many are waiting for fewer active URL's
how many connections are open
how many active URL's

Comment 1

[yoel]

This is a 4.x parity feature request

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

Adding 4xp keyword, updating summary

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Networking maybe?  updating component and owner.  changing status to NEW

Comment 4

[Sean Richardson]

This feature would allow better collection of facts for such bugs as
bug 19115, "Page load in new window delayed if many images on first page" and
bug 12155, "[4.xP] should load non-displayed images less aggressively",
without having to run external instrumentation.

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

changed FEATURE to RFE in summary.

Comment 6

[Jacek Piskozub]

If this is a 4xp bug, it cannot be RFE. RFEs aren't actually bugs at all.  See
(for example) the discussion in bug 42441. BTW, RFE implies severity of
"enhancement" and as this feature is in Netscape 4.* we are right to keep it as
"normal".

Comment 7

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

*** Bug 82077 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[benc]

mass move, v2.
qa to me.

Comment 9

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 83617 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[benc]

If this is 4xp, can it really be futured?

Comment 11

[Darin Fisher]

it is just a debug feature request.

Comment 12

[Aaron Kaluszka]

According to http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/mozkeyintro.html
we aren't supposed to do CTRL+ALT+T.. have another suggestion?

Comment 13

[Darin Fisher]

about:http

Comment 14

[Jesse Ruderman]

It could just be an item on the Tasks->Tools menu without a keyboard shortcut. 
CF bug 67596, [rfe] keyboard shortcuts for Tasks/Tools menu items, resolved/wontfix.

Comment 15

[David Walser]

the about:http idea doesn't work because it makes you load a separate page when all you want is a dialog about the page(s) you're loading, and the having it in the menu w/out a shortcut is a bad idea because you often want to access the dialog while the GUI may be blocking, and generally want to access it quickly and rapidly.

Comment 16

[Jacek Piskozub]

Ctrl-Shift-T. Similar, so easy to remember and even easier to type. 

Comment 17

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 90225 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Doron Rosenberg (IBM)]

ctrl-alt does not work on win32, see 69954

Comment 19

[Philipp Hanes]

How about a more general status console?
If the issue is regarding the keystroke combination to make the data come up,
I'd be willing to just have a dialog window that shows ongoing status of various
types, instead (obviously with at least the mentioned info, and perhaps other
things, if relevant).
I suppose then it loses its 4xp status, then, but it doesn't seem like there's
much happening with this at the moment anyway.

Comment 20

[Brant Gurganus]

[RFE] is deprecated in favor of severity: enhancement.  They have the same meaning.

Comment 21

[Jesse Ruderman]

Bug 249690 is the same bug for Firefox.

Comment 22

[Darin Fisher]

how about someone write an extension for this?  doesn't seem like it needs to be
part of the core browser.  granted there are no APIs in the core browser to
write such an extension ;-)

Comment 23

[David Walser]

It seems kind of silly to make an extension for one dialog box.  It's just a
very useful way to get a better look at status information than what the UI of a
status bar can show you.  The amount of "bloat" it would add should be negligible.

Comment 24

[Darin Fisher]

Yes, but there will forever be a gazillion things more important for the core
developers to be working on.  If this is going to happen, it is most likely
going to have to come from an external contributor.  I'm willing to entertain a
patch to core Mozilla code... I just don't have any time to do it myself.

Comment 25

[benc]

-> defaults. Hopefully the depends will keep the usual stream of firefox dupes away.

Comment 26

[Patrick McManus [:mcmanus]]

devtools plays this role

Comment 27

[David Walser]

(In reply to Patrick McManus [:mcmanus] from comment #26)
> devtools plays this role

How?  A quick look at the devtools documentation doesn't suggest that there's any feature that a Firefox user can use that plays the role of what Ctrl-Alt-T used to do (and it was a very useful feature, and would still be today).

Comment 28

[Jesse Ruderman]

Let's see what the dev tools team thinks :)

Comment 29

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

(In reply to David Walser from comment #27)
> (In reply to Patrick McManus [:mcmanus] from comment #26)
> > devtools plays this role
> 
> How?  A quick look at the devtools documentation doesn't suggest that
> there's any feature that a Firefox user can use that plays the role of what
> Ctrl-Alt-T used to do (and it was a very useful feature, and would still be
> today).

Can someone describe what it used to do?  I am not familiar with this.  It seems like it displays connection info given comment 0, but where?  In a new tab / window just showing that data?

Comment 30

[David Walser]

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (use ni?) from comment #29)
> Can someone describe what it used to do?  I am not familiar with this.  It
> seems like it displays connection info given comment 0, but where?  In a new
> tab / window just showing that data?

That's a great question, as this bug is 15 years old and even I barely remember even though I used to use the feature frequently.  I thought I still mostly remembered, but had to look to be sure.  Pressing Ctrl-Alt-T would pop up a small dialog window with information about the files that the web browser is currently trying to download it.  There is a picture of it here:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r1065815-new-old-easter-egg

These days, it happens often that a page gets stuck or otherwise seems problematic while trying to load, and the page is pulling files from several different web servers, likely one or two of which are causing the problems.  If you have the Status4Evar extension, sometimes you can see what URLs are stuck/still-trying-to-download cycling through in the status bar, but this Ctrl-Alt-T dialog window was much more usable.  It would just give you a flat list of the URLs still trying to load, which can make it much easier to determine which are the problematic ones.  A user may choose to respond to this situation by blocking problematic servers, possibly through proxy filtering or ad block extension rules.

Comment 31

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

Thanks, that helps a lot!  Based on past comments here, it seems an "entire browser" tool like about:whatever is not what is wanted here.  Instead, you want something specific to the current page.

This seems within the realm of the Network Monitor in DevTools.  I believe some of the desired information is present in its request timeline, however it is certainly not presented in the same way.  Potentially the tool could be extended to add missing information.

One seemingly big difference however is that the Network Monitor requires the DevTools toolbox to have already been open before a request began if it is meant to know of its existence.  It could potentially be enhanced to at least show the basic data that this old tool used to display when more info is not available because the request began before the tool opened.

Anyway, several possibilities.  I'll move this to Network Monitor, since it seems like the most closely related tool today.