observadora

The chart extension is also hierarchical, but starts out with all elements expanded, then allows you to collapse elements -at any place in the hierarchy- to drill down to the element you want to focus on. This is much more efficient than having to click every single parent element, one by one, starting with the opening HTML tag before I can even see the element I want to examine.

Also, the chart’s color coding tells you the exact type of element each containing element is, just by looking to the element’s left. With DI, you’re forced to follow one of many dashed gray lines up, usually while scrolling, in order to read the tag. Far too easy to lose your place. And you have to repeat this process for each and every containing element. Ridiculously cumbersome.

In a chart, you can collapse any one of those containing elements from the same place in the viewport, no scrolling up to click on its tiny “-“.

While I agree the flashing border on the chosen element is a feature the chart doesn’t have, I’ve never found it to be useful because you have to click the icon to activate that feature every time. There are several other extensions which do a much better job of providing that shortcut to an element’s code equivalent. (firebug, aardvark, platypus, to name a few)

There are a lot of requests for DI improvements and hopefully they will happen soon. Otherwise, I think users will keep abandoning it for more useful extensions.