Hacking Mountain Lion: Bringing the old Web Inspector back

http://thomasst.ch/webinspector/

by bound008 • 14 years ago

30 34 14 years ago

thomasst.ch

tambourine_man5• 14 years ago

You can't create new style rules with the new inspector.

It's also buggy and skow to the point of being unusable.

Who ever thought that was ready for release must be out of his mind.

Also, if you chose "use webkit inspector" you're no longer able to view source.

I'm left with no alternative. Chrome is hideous on OS X and I hate that omnibar that Safari now shares. I'm using Safari for browsing and chrome for developing but it's a terrible experience.

DeepDuh4• 14 years ago

May I ask what's so bad about Chrome on OSX?

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

Answering because I also think it's hideous: the tool bar style and color are different from the rest of the OS. The new icon is way flatter than anything else in the dock (save the new Messages icon, maybe; see [1]). Even though I found a nice-looking skin on my one Mac, there doesn't seem to be any way to find out the theme's name and install it on my other Mac. The right-click menu is different than in all other web views on the system (at least in the German localization). The built-in dictionary lookup support (what is triple tap nowadays) is getting there, but still worse than Safari in my experience.

[1] http://maururu.net/2011/old-chrome-icons/

ludwigvan• 14 years ago

Pinch to zoom (double tap) doesn't work. (pinch to zoom actually work, but in noticable increments, not smooth.)

philfreo3• 14 years ago

We're developing a OS X Cocoa app that has a large Webkit component which uses whatever Safari on your system uses for the inspector. So Chrome isn't always a good option.

anatoli• 14 years ago

You can view source using Opt - Cmd - U as in the past, it just opens up in the Web Inspector now. Still the same, old source code though. You can switch between the source code and the DOM tree by clicking on that weird green icon above the source.

tambourine_man5• 14 years ago

In my Mac you can't. 10.8.2

If you choose “Use WebKit Inspector” Opt-Cmd-U does nothing.

farnsworth• 14 years ago

Same thoughts here, I already normally use Chrome when possible but I have no choice for debugging Safari Mobile.

crag• 14 years ago

"I'm left with no alternative. "

How about Firefox (I'm running 15.01), and Firebug?

tambourine_man5• 14 years ago

I'm not a fan of Firebug and I don't like Firefox's text rendering.

gaving• 14 years ago

Yeah, as he said, no alternative.

anemitz2• 14 years ago

Repost of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4440198

I didn't think reposts were possible?

anemitz2• 14 years ago

downvote, really?

philfreo3• 14 years ago

I love how you can't even see POST data in the new inspector

bdash2• 14 years ago

By replacing your system frameworks with those from a WebKit nightly you're going to see trouble with OS X software updates, system-wide instability due to running bleeding-edge code, and a test environment which isn't representative of what your users will see.

If for some reason you need to use the frameworks from a WebKit nightly with your application, use DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH to point your app at the WebKit nightly's frameworks. This has the same benefit without any of the downsides mentioned above.

danso2• 14 years ago

Wow, I had no idea the Safari Inspector was so bad. Because I've stopped using Safari at all..it's performance even on my brand new MBP is atrocious...maybe it's because of how the loading bar painfully crawls across the browser, accentuating the load times. Or maybe it's just the crashing.

I'm glad I didn't try the inspector...it would've driven me crazy but I wouldn't have guessed that they just killed the inspector

JacksonGariety• 14 years ago

A couple reasons not to do this:

1. Your frameworks are out of sync with the the rest of the system, could cause problems updating.

2. You're now running super-buggy development WebKit. The code you're using was written a few hours ago, remember that.

3. The old WebKit inspector doesn't have retina support. If you've got a rMBP and care about how it looks, don't do this.

4. The article gives no information on how to go "back" after you've done it.

philfreo3• 14 years ago

My comment on the post shows how to go "back"

jarek-foksa2• 14 years ago

It's developement version, but I wouldn't call it super-buggy. WebKit project has strict development process, each commit is rigourously reviewed and tested before merging.

You will likely run into problems if you enable experimental flags though.

bdash2• 14 years ago

While the WebKit project has a strict review process and a substantial amount of regression testing, code reviews can't catch all issues and WebKit doesn't have complete test coverage for all aspects of web technology. Changes can, and often do, introduces regressions from subtle rendering errors to all-out crashes.

These sorts of temporary issues aren't that a big deal if it's in a separate application that you use only for testing, but they're a darn sight more painful when you replace your system WebKit frameworks and they start impacting things like your email client or the system installer stack.

jarek-foksa2• 14 years ago

Replacing WebKit, WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks is a bit risky because many system components depend on them. I would replace only inspector files (mostly JavaScript) instead as described in https://gist.github.com/3898054

89a2• 14 years ago

Want the old Activity Viewer back so much

owyn• 14 years ago

The new inspector is totally unusable. It doesn't seem to solve any of the normal workflows that you run into doing front end dev work. Like inspecting source, looking at the console, looking at network traffic, request/response headers and contents, etc. The console lags unbearably. Even printing an object, it gives you a nice view of the contents but opening it might take 10 seconds. The list goes on. Fortunately I don't have to debug much js at the moment but I switch to Chrome when I need to. Very glad to be able to switch back now with just WebKit because I do prefer it as a browser.

Hacking Mountain Lion: Bringing the old Web Inspector back

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