Page Info is very useful for developers and advanced users, but for basic users most of the stuff in it is useless.
I think that in Firefox, Page info should be more targeted at basic users. The less useful things for these users should be moved to an extension. This extension could be proposed at Firefox installation (like DOM inspector), so that advanced users can still benefit from them.
Things that would in my opinion be better in an extension are for example the Forms and Links tabs, the list of Meta tags (in the General tab)... The General and Security tabs should be simplified and maybe merged.
I think that only the information which is relevant in the current context should be displayed and that irrelevant items should be hidden, as it is currently done in the "Element Properties" window. For example some things would be irrelevant in the context of a standalone image, some other things would be irrelevant in the context of a page loaded from file://, ...
It would be interesting to add things which are more useful to users who don't know anything about HTML. For example one tab about content blocking (images, javascript, cookies, pop ups...) and exceptions for the current site. I would allow the user to easily control white and black lists for the current site.
Some user might also like to have a list of the RSS feeds linked by the page and maybe the possibility to show them in a new tab and to subscribe to them.
I also think that the visual appearance of page info needs to be refreshed, so as to conform with the new preferences windows. I think that for the homogeneity of Firefox, it would be good if the look & feel of Page Info could be similar to the one of the preferences dialog. A contextual help would then be needed.
As an extension would be built to contain the advanced features of the current page info window, it could be a good opportunity to add more information that web developers would like to have. For example, for my personal use of the current page info window, I add three extensions: View Cookies, LiveHTTPHeaders and View Dependencies (I wrote myself this last one). The features (or some of the features) provided by those extensions might be worth being added.
In any case, the Page Info window should be as extensible as possible, so that extension developers can easily add the information that they think will be needed.
See also bug 214265
I kept only the General and the Media Tab. In the General tab, I removed the Meta part. I added a third (useless at that time) tab to workaround a strange behavior of <prefpane> elements. I also had problems with bug 296418.
© 2007-2008 - Florian Quèze
