762684 - make keyboard shortcut toggle Inspector view, not just open it

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools :: Inspector, defect)

Description

[Brian Warner [:warner :bwarner]]

passing along a request from a friend: he noticed that (on a mac) Command-Option-I switches the page into Inspect mode, but hitting it again does not return to normal mode (unlike Command-Option-M for Responsive mode, or Command-Option-K for the Console, which are both toggles). Instead, once you're in Inspect mode, co-I toggles between selecting the element under the mouse (equivalent to clicking on an element) and unselecting elements (equivalent to clicking on the arrow-in-a-box icon). ESC is the keyboard shortcut to get out of Inspect mode altogether.

He requested that co-I be changed to toggle between Inspect mode and normal mode, rather than requiring ESC to exit it.

I don't use this mode all that much myself (yet), but I can see value in being consistent with the other modes, and I can't imagine ever pointing at some element with the mouse and then hitting co-I (which takes two hands to type anyways), so I don't think I'd miss the current behavior.

This non-toggling behavior seems to exist in all versions that have the Inspect shortcut: Aurora=FF14 and up.

Comment 1

[Rob Campbell [:rc] (:robcee)]

This change was introduced with bug 717923.

You'll also note that ESC also closes the Responsive mode so at least we're consistent there.

I think this new keyboard implementation makes sense after getting used to it, though muscle-memory is hard to retrain. Give it a try and reopen this if you feel strongly about it!