Inspect the popup for remote extensions; Power Debugging Console

Question

To debug extensions, Chrome uses the "View Pop-up Window" menu option when you right-click the extension icon (top right in the browser). I believe that these options have been recently removed (possibly with the latest version of Chrome 20 that I am using).

You can activate the debugging console by right-clicking on any element of the extension pop-up window and selecting Inspect Element. However, the problem I'm experiencing is that whenever I have the debug console open now, embedding form elements in a popup does not work. Despite the fact that the form element seems to have focus (it has a blinking cursor active), all entered input goes directly to the debug console.

Refresh . It seems that the focus is not specifically for the debug console, but depending on which window is lower. It looks like an extension window - it is a "stay on top" window without writing any input.

Update: 2012-07-24: Updated to 22.0.1215.0 (Official Build 147830) dev , and the error still exists. But yay, Youtube full screen now suddenly runs on my dual screen system!

Update 2012-05-09: Updated from 20.0.1123 to 20.0.1130.1 dev on Linux x64 (Ubuntu 12.04). The problem still exists and makes debugging extensions much more difficult than necessary. Also confirmed behavior in an earlier release of Chrome (20.0.1105.0). Well, maybe it's just me ...

Update 2012-05-09 2: Assuming this is a bug, consider adding a background page to your popup and go to that console on the page until the error is fixed. At least it makes my life easier.

Update: 2012-10-19: As omri writes (and points to), the Inspect Popup option is on this way to return to Chrome, which I hope will solve this problem (finally).

Can someone confirm / reject this behavior and / or suggest possible workarounds?

Answer 1

Just upgraded to 22.0.1221.1 (Official Build 149058) dev, and the problem seems to have been resolved, albeit with a workaround. The old way of right-clicking in a pop-up window and selecting "Inspect Element" to start the console still captures all the input, as originally reported.

However, it seems that by right-clicking on the popup window icon, the old "Inspect Popup" seems to be back, and when used, it does not seem to capture input from the popup itself.

Answer 2

• Open popup
• Right-click the popup and check.

Answer 3

It will be added to chrome http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143349

Answer 4

Update: Refusal to respond, as another user has confirmed this behavior for OSX, at least it will appear as undisclosed on the radar, although there is probably somewhere somewhere where it should be sent.

This error is still present in google-chrome-beta (version 20.0.1132.34 beta). I assume this is due to the handling of windows and pop-ups on X11 as a whole and, obviously, is not a high priority error, as it remained that way for quite a few releases. The final question.

Answer 5

I see the missing "Inspect Popup" option when I right-click, but I can edit / enter text in the form fields.

I am wondering if you have a problem with unrelated ones? If you use or update the new extension manifest 2.0, you may run into problems due to which the built-in javascript in the popup does not work anymore due to the addition of default content_security_policy parameters. This basically prevents the script from being injected, but also seems to kill all the JS in the popup. There are ways around this by changing the way events are managed in the popup window or by changing the default policy. Here's a link to the document for this: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/contentSecurityPolicy.html

This is just an assumption because I don’t know what is going on in your code, but I have seen similar things when updating my extension recently.