843280 - Add a way to collapse the sidebar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools :: Console, defect, P3)

Description

[Mihai Sucan [:msucan]]

In bug 808370 we add the variables view in a sidebar. Once the sidebar opens there's no way to collapse it.

There's a bug about adding a close button to the sidebar tabs, we should consider that. (I can't find the bug number.)

CC'ing Paul: what do you suggest we should do? We need something that can be used by the web console, debugger and other tools (like the inspector and style editor in the future).

(also, should we move this bug to the framework side of things?)

Comment 1

[Paul Rouget [:paul]]

(In reply to Mihai Sucan [:msucan] from comment #0)
> In bug 808370 we add the variables view in a sidebar. Once the sidebar opens
> there's no way to collapse it.
> 
> There's a bug about adding a close button to the sidebar tabs, we should
> consider that. (I can't find the bug number.)

bug 816947.

If we use the close button, we can't re-open the sidebar with the same button.
Is that what we want? Or do we want to collapse/uncollapse the sidebar?

If we want the latter, the button needs to be outside of the sidebar (or at least when collapsed, it needs to be outside).

What about the other tools?
- inspector: I don't think we even need to be be able to close/collapse the sidebar
- jsterm: we want to close, not really collapse

Because the wanted behavior is different depending on the tool, I'd suggest that it's up to the tool to implement the button. The sidebar can always expose an API to close/hide/unhide the panel.

Comment 2

[Mihai Sucan [:msucan]]

I believe we need both: collapse and close. "Close" should be an option for each new tab added to the sidebar, and "collapse" should be an option for the sidebar, when created. Also, I'm not sure we want these to be implemented by each dev tool. The toolbox will become capable of being moved to the sidebar of the browser window - it would be ideal if the sidebar implementation itself would handle the layout readjustments, the collapsing, close buttons, etc. If we let each dev tool implement this, we'll have differences in how they behave. I'd suggest that the debugger also starts using the toolbox sidebar functionality.

Also, I'd like an option to hide the tab bar or show it only when multiple tabs are added. I had to add a CSS hack for this in the web console.

Comment 4

[Frederik Braun [:freddy]]

My current workaround is to hit "Escape", but if I'm the Debugger with a split console, both the sidebar and the console close.

Comment 5

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

Marking as easy because the inspector, netmonitor and debugger all have it already. There's a function in ViewHelpers that can do this pretty easily.

Comment 6

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

note that bug 1243802 is moving to expand variables inline.

Comment 7

[Nicolas Chevobbe [:nchevobbe]]

won't be fixed in old frontend. Would be handled in the new one by Bug 1419078