Focus browser window on "Pick element"

Developer Tools
#1

Hi,

From the last entry on the mozilla.dev.developer-tools Google Group, I presume this is the right place to make this suggestion. If not, please let me know.

Could an option be added to automatically bring the browser window into focus the moment you click the “Pick an element from the page” button?

I use Developer Tools as an external window (i.e. not docked to the browser window) as I’m regularly changing the window size to test responsive work.

It’s therefore not unusual for the Developer Tools to overlap the main window. If you click the “Pick an element from the page” button in order to click on an item that is hidden under the developer tools, it’s necessary to then click the browser somewhere other than the page content to bring the windows to the front in order to click on the now visible item.

Thanks,
Tom

#2

To me this sound like something you might want to setup on your OS/window system. For instance, I use “Focus follows mouse” on Ubuntu Linux and on Windows. What you would also want besides this is “Auto-Raise”. In case you use Ubuntu, you can these instructions: http://askubuntu.com/questions/64605/how-do-i-set-focus-follows-mouse

For Windows I cannot really remember but I think I did follow this guide: http://superuser.com/questions/954021/how-do-you-enable-focus-follows-mouse-in-windows-10

#3

This is definitely not something I want to setup on my OS. I’m quite happy for the mouse to leave windows alone, and if anything changing the standard mouse behaviour would drive me nuts.

It’s just a suggestion, not a deal-breaker… it would be useful for me, and potentially others.

(Edit: this was definitely something FireBug used to do - I honestly can’t remember if by default or via an option.)

#4

I see :slight_smile: I just wanted to suggest a workaround but I can definitely understand that you would not want to enable it globally.

#5

An additional thought: it would also be great if, after clicking on an element in the focused browser window, the focus was then put BACK onto the un-docked developer tools window.

Oh, and the moon on a stick please :wink:

1 Like
#6

Looks like a bug was recently filed to implement this at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1328641