Remove the "Open Flutter DevTools" item from the Dart/Flutter Debugger, cleanup all "Open * DevTools" actions from Flutter and Dart Plugins
Opened this issue · 5 comments
Remove the "Open Flutter DevTools" item from the Dart/Flutter Debugger
FYI @alexander-doroshko, @kenzieschmoll
With the improved UX of the embedded browser, we shouldn't direct the user to open devtools from the debugger pane window in this way (i.e. this was added when we didn't have the JxBrowser embedding.)
Screenshot:
Can we leave the affordance and just change what the button does? Instead of opening DevTools in the browser, it could bring the DevTools tool window into focus.
One option is to have a few buttons (or a single button that is a dropdown option?)
- Open the Flutter Inspector (debug mode only)
- Open Flutter DevTools
- Open Flutter DevTools in the Browser
Without this button, how will users know how to open DevTools in the browser? Is there another affordance for that that is discoverable?
For comparison, here is what VS Code has in the debug controls (for a debug mode flutter app the last action is a button to open the Flutter Inspector):
and then here are the command palette actions:
This button associates DevTools as only a debugging tool, also it takes developers out of the IDE by opening a browser pointed to the DevTools URL, the only way to use DevTools when the action was added into the Dart plugin.
With the current implementation, the Flutter Inspector is already open, this button/action is now the opposite of what we want users to do with all of the cleanup earlier this year putting in the windows with dedicated DevTools pages.
Put another way, instead of having three actions (see the screenshot), of "Open Flutter DevTools" and "Flutter DevTools" and "Open Flutter DevTools", we should just have one item in the Actions listed which opens the presentation using JxBrowser. If JxBrowser is unsuccessful, an external link to the browser is provided to the user.
There are still cases where a user might prefer to use DevTools in the browser that are valid. For example, some of the more complex tools like Performance and Memory may require more screen real estate than is available in the tool window. So we should still have that option accessible to the user as an action at the very least.
One nit on that list of actions: the Inspector and Deep Links tool windows should come up too for the search terms "flutter" and "devtools"
Ack. What about changing the action to be "Open Flutter DevTools in Browser" to reduce confusion?
When embedded, does DevTools have a way to easily open the current view in DevTools in a Browser? I don't see it, if it is there, what I am looking for specifically is an "open external link button" (
) in the bottom of each DevTools page.
As for having the various windows more searchable, yes, "Dart" and "Flutter" should both make all the appropriate windows (and actions) form our plugins appear.
What about changing the action to be "Open Flutter DevTools in Browser" to reduce confusion?
SGTM. This is consistent with VS Code.
When embedded, does DevTools have a way to easily open the current view in DevTools in a Browser?
No it does not. This would be useful though and could be one of the toolbar actions when in embedded mode. I filed flutter/devtools#8584 to track.
As for having the various windows more searchable, yes, "Dart" and "Flutter" should both make all the appropriate windows (and actions) form our plugins appear.
What about "DevTools" though? In the screenshot above, it doesn't look like the Flutter Inspector or the Flutter Deep Links tool show up for the "DevTools" search query.