Important note: This does not work for new Blink-based versions of Chrome because it no longer supports user stylesheets.
Chrome dev tools theme designed for use with dock-to-right feature. It optimizes the panels so that it is usable being tall and slim.
- New dock icons (mostly to make them occupy less space)
- Vertical split view instead of horizontal
- Scrollable Network tab
- Console as first tab (so it's visible even if you don't have space for all tabs)
- Sliding Styles panels by pressing Esc (when you are focusing on the styles instead of the DOM tree)
Currently this theme is designed for the Mac. I think it would work on Windows and Linux but I didn't test those. I suspect there will be some minor issues, and I will be glad if anyone is willing to fix those.
I have tested this on the current Chrome Canary (v28) and Chrome Stable (v26), as of 18th Apr, 2013. Let me know if there are any issues with these or other versions.
There is a related Chromium issue that will get Chromium developers' attentions and efforts on the issue. Star this issue to see the changes built into Chrome as soon as possible.
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=168655]
14 May, 2013: Current Chrome Canary (29.0) now has a more usable elements panel when docked to the right.
6 Oct, 2013: Current Chrome has vertical split views and other optimizations for dock-to-right. This theme still provides a much more aggressive space saving for the dev tools.
Copy Custom.css to User Stylesheets in your Chrome profile directory.
The exact location of the profile path can be found in chrome://version.
The default locations of the folders are as listed:
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/User StyleSheets/Custom.css
PC: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\User StyleSheets\Custom.css
Ubuntu (Chromium): ~/.config/chromium/Default/User StyleSheets/Custom.css
Credits to Darcy Clarke and his sources for the file locations
For more details on how to install the theme, see this blog post
Elements tab
Network tab
I have divided the CSS script into sections. Sections are separated by an exaggerated 3-line block comment, with a title in it describing the contents below. Each section can stand on its own, so you can delete the ones you don't need.
Additional one-line comments is available for more details. In general, blocks separated by one-line comments should be used with the whole section, except for (optional add-on), which if you use the section, you can separately decide whether to include the add-on.
- The bottom bar does not work well (parts of it is still not visible / clickable)