Bug 128841 – Web Inspector: Breakpoint controls should be visible in more situations.

• Status: NEW
• Component: Web Inspector

[Chris J. Shull]

Web Inspector: Breakpoint controls (enable/disable, play/pause, step over/in/out) should be visible in more situations.

For note, Xcode has a persistent display of these controls.
Older versions of the inspector also had them available more persistently, and after using the newer inspector for a while I still miss them.

Example scenario where this would be useful:
1) show inspector
2) cmd-shift-f to search in all resources
3) select a script result
4) add a breakpoint -> realized breakpoints are disabled because the breakpoint is greyed out
Now I have to switch to another panel to turn them on.

And there are other scenarios where I wish I didn't have to change views just to interact with these controls.
(Yes, there are shortcuts, but I've been spoiled by previous inspector versions and haven't quite learned these particular ones yet.)

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/16073650>

[Timothy Hatcher]

We plan to make adding a breakpoint or toggling a breakpoint enable all breakpoints again. Adding a grey breakpoint is just silly.

Making the debugger controls more visible might also be good, but when paused we force the debugger sidebar visible already, where the controls live.

[Chris J. Shull]

> when paused we force the debugger sidebar visible already

That's a good point, and is certainly useful in many situations.
But sometimes when I hit a breakpoint I really need to inspect the DOM at that breakpoint, not the JS. Once done inspecting the DOM I used to be able to start things back up from there, without having to switch back to the debugger view (which was handy).

[Timothy Hatcher]

(In reply to comment #3)
> > when paused we force the debugger sidebar visible already
> 
> That's a good point, and is certainly useful in many situations.
> But sometimes when I hit a breakpoint I really need to inspect the DOM at that breakpoint, not the JS. Once done inspecting the DOM I used to be able to start things back up from there, without having to switch back to the debugger view (which was handy).

Fair enough. The standard location in Xcode is the console drawer at the bottom. We could move things back there, or maybe the Inspector toolbar / activity view.