728491 - "Inspect Element" doesn't work correctly if desired element is underneath the overlay

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 708643

(DevTools :: Inspector, defect)

Description

[Ari Lacenski]

Attachment: Mozilla Firefox Start Page.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.1
Build ID: 20120208060813

Steps to reproduce:

I'm on the default local Firefox homepage (about:home) in Firefox 10.0.1. I right-clicked the Google logo to the left (#searchEngineLogo) and clicked Inspect Element in the context menu. Now I'm trying to select other elements on the page. With the overlay still visible, I right-clicked the Search button (#searchSubmit) and inspected it. This adds a doubled overlay that lets me maintain BOTH elements "selected" in the inspect state.



Actual results:

I can not fully leave the inspect-element state (can't kill the overlay.) Pressing ESC key to get out of the overlay only clears the inspect state for the second element. 

I can't find any way to fully get rid of the overlay, short of reloading the page. That will definitely not work for testing asynchronously modified pages. Pressing ESC to clear the inspect state only works for me intermittently anyway. 

Also, selection behavior while in "inspect" state is SUPER erratic - if the secondary element I select is large (or apparently if its border is dynamic, like a div without a forced size) I frequently don't actually get that element selected. Instead I get a neighboring or parent element.


Expected results:

I should be able to fully clear out of the inspect state by pressing ESC (and/or with a mouse context menu item). I should also be able to select whatever element is directly under my cursor, regardless of "inspect" being on or not. 

Multiple selection is kind of cool, but very buggy. I'd rather have single element inspection with predictable behavior.

Comment 1

[Ari Lacenski]

I have Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar add-ons installed. I'm no longer sure what the difference is between "Inspect Element" and "Inspect Element with Firebug", but I'm using "Inspect Element" consistently when I do this.

Comment 2

[Paul Rouget [:paul]]

Thanks for the bug report. We fixed this bug in Firefox 13.