[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 63580] Web Inspector: General Purpose Tree API in Extension API

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63580





--- Comment #1 from Pavel Feldman <pfeldman at chromium.org>  2011-06-28 22:28:40 PST ---
I have a number of concerns on this one:
- Exposing a simple tree would increase the API surface (high maintenance cost)
- Universal tree won't be useful enough unless it exposes entire treeoutline API
- In the inspector itself, tree is just a bunch of <ol> and <li> elements. Sections, sidebars, expandable objects: everything is a tree with custom styling. So if the goal is consistent look and feel, we would need to pick the style we expose and that would kill the flexibility.

There is a couple of alternatives as I see it:

1) Let users hack / reuse existing JavaScript trees and make them look consistent
Pros:
    Zero maintenance cost for inspector, infinite flexibility for the user
Cons:
    Harder jump start for extension authors
Mitigation:
    We render simple JSON objects as trees if one likes to start fast. We can make that rendering a bit more configurable.

2) Use Library approach instead of API approach. Brush up treeoutline.js and suggest that users include it into their extension code. We can extract outline-disclosure.css that works with it and either inject it or suggest including as well (or we could do both).
Pros:
    Zero maintenance cost for inspector, infinite flexibility for the user
Cons:
    ?
Todo:
    Remove outgoing dependencies from treeoutline.js. The ones that are there are there by accident / historical reasons. Should be trivial to sanitize it.

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