976320 - Remove breadcrumbs from debugger UI

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools :: Debugger, defect)

Description

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Attachment: call-stacks.png

Now that we have a classic call stack list, we have the same information in the debugger displayed twice (see screenshot).

My suggestion is to remove the breadcrumbs from the UI altogether, and make sure that when script execution is paused, the sidebar tab immediately focuses to the classic call stack list.

Comment 1

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

We briefly discussed this in Portland and it seemed to be generally agreed upon.  Is there a reason not to do this?

Comment 2

[Victor Porof [:vporof][:vp]]

I somewhat object to doing this. The stack frames aren't shown by default, and you can't view the files list and stack frames list at the same time.

I don't understand why this should be removed. There's little code involved, and doesn't really affect maintainability.

Comment 3

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

> I don't understand why this should be removed. There's little code involved,
> and doesn't really affect maintainability.

My reasoning is that we are showing the exact same thing in two places right next to each other - it adds extra elements to the UI that don't really need to be there and fills the top toolbar with stuff.

> I somewhat object to doing this. The stack frames aren't shown by default,
> and you can't view the files list and stack frames list at the same time.

I hadn't thought of this - I assumed that if we automatically switched to the call stack tab in this case that would cover the main use case when the script is paused.  Maybe we would need to reorganize things a bit if it is important that both of these lists are visible at the same time.  I still think we should pick just one way of displaying this info, but I'd be willing to punt on this if the consensus is otherwise.

Comment 4

[Victor Porof [:vporof][:vp]]

(In reply to Brian Grinstead [:bgrins] from comment #3)
> > I don't understand why this should be removed. There's little code involved,
> > and doesn't really affect maintainability.
> 
> My reasoning is that we are showing the exact same thing in two places right
> next to each other - it adds extra elements to the UI that don't really need
> to be there and fills the top toolbar with stuff.
> 

Sure, however the toolbar would end up being mostly empty, and it doesn't seem like we're going to add anything to it in the near future.

> > I somewhat object to doing this. The stack frames aren't shown by default,
> > and you can't view the files list and stack frames list at the same time.
> 
> I hadn't thought of this - I assumed that if we automatically switched to
> the call stack tab in this case that would cover the main use case when the
> script is paused.  Maybe we would need to reorganize things a bit if it is
> important that both of these lists are visible at the same time.  I still
> think we should pick just one way of displaying this info, but I'd be
> willing to punt on this if the consensus is otherwise.

I don't think automatic context switching is ever a good idea, as it can easily be a source of confusion ("where did my sources go?" ah, so now I need to switch tabs whenever the debugger breaks? grrr..").

The breadcrumbs are a super quick and useful way of answering "what's the last few function calls that got me here" without clicking on things. It also makes it easy to visualize how we enter/exit functions because of the sliding animation, and serve a nice complement to selecting sources when switching between frames.

IMHO, removing the breadcrumbs is just removing functionality with little (or even negative) benefit. They're not currently in the way of anything, you wouldn't save up any space by removing them, and you'll most likely break a few existing users' workflow by doing so :) As a side-note, last time I checked, Firebug has this functionality too, and our debugger will be much more appealing to them if it feels mostly familiar in a few key areas.

Comment 5

[Panos Astithas (he/him) [:past] (please ni?)]

(In reply to Brian Grinstead [:bgrins] from comment #3)
> My reasoning is that we are showing the exact same thing in two places right
> next to each other - it adds extra elements to the UI that don't really need
> to be there and fills the top toolbar with stuff.

The reason we landed the stack pane was to help users who couldn't make sense of the innovative breadcrumb view of the stack, or those who didn't care about anything different than what they were used to. Breadcrumbs neatly solve some very difficult UI problems for us and as long as users like them (and the feedback I've got has been positive so far) I think we should keep them.

Comment 6

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

(In reply to Panos Astithas [:past] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Brian Grinstead [:bgrins] from comment #3)
> > My reasoning is that we are showing the exact same thing in two places right
> > next to each other - it adds extra elements to the UI that don't really need
> > to be there and fills the top toolbar with stuff.
> 
> The reason we landed the stack pane was to help users who couldn't make
> sense of the innovative breadcrumb view of the stack, or those who didn't
> care about anything different than what they were used to. Breadcrumbs
> neatly solve some very difficult UI problems for us and as long as users
> like them (and the feedback I've got has been positive so far) I think we
> should keep them.

Fair enough - punting on this