Bug 31798 – Web Inspector: Make Time graph on Resources Panel sticky

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: INVALID
• Component: Web Inspector (Deprecated)

[Paul Bakaus]

When working a lot with the Resources panel of the Web Inspector, I found myself scrolling down to some specific requests, clicking on them to see their content and information and then constantly having to scroll up again to compare them against the timeline. This happens a lot and is quite annoying over time - one of the workflows that you wouldn't see if you didn't try :)

Two proposals come to my mind:

1) Introduce a tab concept in the resource panel. Clicking on a specific request opens a new tab within the Resources panel, that can be closed - so you can always quickly go back to the Time graph, with the nice side effect that you can easily have multiple requests open and compare them

2) Introduce a new container that wraps the Resources list, effectively introducing a new scrollbar to scroll between the individual requests. This would keep the link back to the graphs sticky at all times.

I personally could even see a combination of both, effectively making the Resources tab a lot more powerful. Let me know what you think!

[Timothy Hatcher]

What about a way to drop the summary graph down from the top at any time? Right not it scrolls out of view to work better in docked mode. But I can see having it drop down when hovering over the timeline bar or clickign a button to toggle it.

[Paul Bakaus]

(In reply to comment #1)
> What about a way to drop the summary graph down from the top at any time? Right
> not it scrolls out of view to work better in docked mode. But I can see having
> it drop down when hovering over the timeline bar or clickign a button to toggle
> it.

I was thinking about this before but come to the personal conclusion that we're probably
loosing to much vertical screen real estate, as you're saying especially relevant in docked
mode.

The summary graph of individual requests unfortunately needs quite a lot of vertical space
in the current layout - even more so with the recent additional dropdowns (for request
info etc). If we could change the layout of the collapsible extra info containers to use less
vertical space, I could see it working out.

That being said, in general I think the vertical space is pretty important when looking at
both requests (file contents for instance) and the timeline to get the big picture.

So here's another, pretty similar attempt, trying to be a pretty elegant solution:

How about making the whole thing behave like the Finder in column mode? We kind of
bundle the left menu and the time/size graphs visually, and as soon as you click on a
request, a new horizontal column swipes in, showing the summary.

[Timothy Hatcher]

I guess I am confused, are we talking about the same thing?

[Paul Bakaus]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I guess I am confused, are we talking about the same thing?

Um, I hope :) Maybe some screenshots will visualize better what I'm talking about, will try to prepare something tonight if possible.

Maybe it's also the wording - what is the summary graph? When I said summary graph, I think I was (possibly wrongly) referring to the state when you click on a specific file/request on the left hand panel of the Resources panel (where you see request info, source code etc). The timeline would be the graph that shows if you hit "Time".

[Rob Colburn]

Old bug.  @Paul, what's the status here - have these needs been fulfilled with the iterations of the Network and Resources panels?

[Paul Bakaus]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Old bug.  @Paul, what's the status here - have these needs been fulfilled with the iterations of the Network and Resources panels?

Hi Rob,
I think with the ability to dock the web inspector to the right of the browser window, this problem is much less apparent and the bug can probably be closed.

[Rob Colburn]

Hey Paul,

Ya, that little toggle in the lower left to make the request consume 1 line helps too.  I do like your idea on the finder column though - similar to Fiddler's set-up.

Not my call, either way - just trying to help triage WebKit's backlog.