Bug 271894 – Web Inspector: In console, the Infos and Debugs scope bar items disappear after they've appeared and user clears console

• Status: NEW
• Component: Web Inspector

[Qianlang Chen]

Created attachment 470663 [details]
Video demo: The Infos button disappeared when changing scope filter

A recent patch https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/pull/24565 introduced a new behavior from the scope bar items in the inspector's console: the "Infos" and "Debugs" buttons only appear when there are `console.info` or `console.debug` messages present in the console, and the buttons immediately disappear if they're not selected and the user clears the console.

This new behavior is potentially confusing, but more importantly, it could make scope-filtering even harder to use. If a user actively prefers using `console.info` or `console.debug` for their logging purposes, they now always have to deal with the buttons repeatedly disappearing and re-appearing, especially in conjunction with using other scope filters (like "Errors") and clearing the console.

   - For a quick demonstration of the current behavior and its inconvenience (attached video demo):
      1. Open inspector's console
      2. Run code: console.info("my info")
         - Observe that the "Infos" button appears, which is good
      3. Click on the "Infos" button
         - This mimics if the user prefers calling `console.info` to log messages
      4. Clear the console by either pressing Command+K or clicking on the bin icon on the far right of the scope bar
      5. Click on the "Errors" button
         - This mimics if the user also wants to filter and read some errors
         - Observe that the "Infos" button disappears, causing disturbance to the user who prefers `console.info`

In the end, if a user put in effort to select the "Infos" or "Debugs" scopes, chances are that they'd likely use it again, so there is little reason to hide them immediately when they deselect them, at least until the inspector closes and reopens.

Perhaps we could improve our UI's usability and intuitiveness by letting the two buttons stay visible at least until the inspector is closed (but not when the page reloads with the inspector open)?

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/125621103>