[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 255069] Web Inspector: Restore Force dark/light appearance button

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255069

Razvan Caliman <rcaliman at apple.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Resolution|---                         |WONTFIX
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
                 CC|                            |rcaliman at apple.com

--- Comment #2 from Razvan Caliman <rcaliman at apple.com> ---
Hello Ricky!

Thank you for taking the time to voice your concern!

I can understand the process to toggle the color scheme preference is now a bit more involved after moving the toggle to the User Preference Overrides popover. I know this takes a couple of clicks now and that may slow you down.

We deliberated on the change and didn't take it lightly. I assure you we thought about many aspects of this.

Ultimately, we decided to consolidate the user preference overrides into a popover for a few reasons:
- it logically groups user preferences together.
- it draws attention to the accessibility user preferences by co-locating them with the preference for color scheme.
- it allows us to grow the list of user preference overrides over time while saving space in the Elements tab.
- it creates space in the Elements tab for new tools (yes, we should also move the toggle print emulation).

We considered that moving the color scheme toggle might confuse developers. That's why the button that opens the popover uses the same icon that's found in macOS and iOS Settings panels for the Appearance section: to serve as a visual reminder of what's expected to be inside. Granted, this icon choice might be to the detriment for those explicitly looking for Accessibility, but we favored recall for Appearance / color scheme and relied on visual proximity to this popular preference to draw attention to the accessibility-related ones.

We also intentionally put the color scheme toggle as the first option in the popover. We anticipated this will be used frequently and we wanted to reduce the necessary mouse movement to toggle it. I do understand this isn't as straightforward as clicking on a single button.

We just fixed a bug (https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/pull/13630) which should maintain the override for the color scheme user preference when reloading the page while Web Inspector is open. This should reduce the number of times you have to toggle it manually during a debugging session.

Expanding the user preference values into radio controls was considered and we prototyped it, but we decided against for a few reasons:
- there are varying numbers of possible values (2, 3, many) making horizontal layout and alignment between preferences difficult.
- the length of strings for values can vary a lot between languages making the popover disproportionately wide (laying them out vertically consumes a lot of space that we'd rather use to surface more user preferences before having to scroll and potentially miss them because scrollbars are not visible by default).

I really do appreciate your feedback and the time you put into writing it up. Your perspective as a web developer helps.
It's unlikely we'll revert the UI to move the toggle for color scheme back out, but I hope the reasons provided above help you understand the thinking behind why we made that UI choice.

I hope you find the new user preference overrides helpful, alongside the one you use frequently for color scheme. 
If there are others you'd like to have, please let us know by filing an issue.

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