DEV Community

Wilson Gouanet
Wilson Gouanet

Posted on

2

Demystifying Disappearing Dropdowns: A Chrome Developer's Guide to Inspecting Volatile UI Elements

As web developers, we often encounter the frustrating scenario of trying to inspect dynamic UI elements, such as dropdowns, that seem to disappear the moment we try to interact with them.

Recently, I was working on an app that uses Material UI components, and I encountered this exact issue when trying to inspect an autocomplete dropdown. The problem was that the dropdown would vanish as soon as the document lost focus, making it nearly impossible to inspect using the standard Chrome DevTools.

However, there is a clever solution to this problem: the "Page Focus Emulation" feature in Chrome DevTools. By activating this feature, you can keep the dropdown visible and accessible for inspection, even when the document is not in focus.

Here's how it works:

  1. Open the Chrome DevTools (You can find easy tips for that here).
  2. Navigate to the "Rendering" tab in the DevTools panel, or click the :hov button on the action bar in Elements > Styles.
  3. Check the Emulate a focused page checkbox.

Now you can freely interact with the dropdown and use the Chrome DevTools to inspect its structure, styles, and behavior.

How to use page focus emulation

It's important to note that the "Page Focus Emulation" feature is designed to help with debugging purposes only. Once you've completed your inspection, remember to disable this feature to ensure your web application behaves as expected in a real-world scenario.

By mastering this technique, you can overcome the challenges of inspecting disappearing UI elements and gain a deeper understanding of your web application's inner workings. Happy debugging!


Further exploration:

Image of Timescale

🚀 pgai Vectorizer: SQLAlchemy and LiteLLM Make Vector Search Simple

We built pgai Vectorizer to simplify embedding management for AI applications—without needing a separate database or complex infrastructure. Since launch, developers have created over 3,000 vectorizers on Timescale Cloud, with many more self-hosted.

Read full post →

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
ladinstar profile image
Avaïka T. Alladin •

It's truly fascinating to uncover ingenious solutions like this! This guide on demystifying disappearing dropdowns is not only interesting but also solves one of my daily challenges as a web developer. Thank you for sharing this helpful tip!

Billboard image

The Next Generation Developer Platform

Coherence is the first Platform-as-a-Service you can control. Unlike "black-box" platforms that are opinionated about the infra you can deploy, Coherence is powered by CNC, the open-source IaC framework, which offers limitless customization.

Learn more