Return Chrome developer tools “calculated” to extend / smooth style

Question

After updating Chrome, somewhere around version 43.0.2357.81 m, the layout of Computed Styles has now changed.

It was used for formatting like this (sorry, SO will not let me include images!):

http://i.stack.imgur.com/30GVK.png

for example, showing the inheritance hierarchy under the style attribute. Starting from the update, it does not show inheritance for each style attribute, and instead you need to click the search icon for each individual attribute and open it in a different tab:

www.davidbranford.net/chrome_new.png

This new behavior really hurts my workflow. Does anyone know how to get back to old behavior? Perhaps there is a chrome flag?

While we're there, why can't you just click on the color representation in the developer tools to switch between RGB / HEX / HSL? Sometimes it gets frustrating when harmless but useful functions are removed.

Thanks in advance, David

Answer 1

YES!

I could not agree.

This change really impairs the usability of the tool. This is the main reason I still get to Firebug, although Chrome outperforms Firefox in several ways (for my purposes).

It's funny that the documentation still shows the old (excellent) layout:

https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/elements-styles

The only solution I can think of is to install an older version of Chrome. I'm on Ubuntu, so I could try the previous version from this page:

http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/pm/google-chrome-stable

where I could set, for example. version 42. However, you probably have to turn off automatic updates, and you need to be careful with the application data (favorites, etc.). More details here:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/485856/how-do-i-downgrade-google-chrome

Too much trouble, I did not bother to try this, although it is really annoying. I will mix and match using Chrome Dev tools with Firebug, maybe.

Oh, and by the way, I see a discussion of exactly this problem on the Google Chrome / Chromium forum:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=496263

The answer to the question why this change was made:

"This is an expected change in behavior. It probably needs to be evangelized so that developers know why this change is better than the previous one."

I posted a comment on this Chromium forum to find out the reason for this change.

Answer 2

Well, after a few days of being crazy, not finding where the magnifying glass falls, I found this thread.

It appears that as of December 2015, Chrome version 47.0.2526.80 m, the behavior of the style inspector has changed again, more so as requested by David Brandorf and Levo van den Bulck. But, again, my needs are still needed.

So, I posted a comment on the same topic of the Chrome issue mentioned here, but in a more diplomatic way, requiring support for BOTH behavior, which should be fairly easy to do with:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=496263#c20