How can I disable the new autocomplete from history

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Nate Dudenhoeffer

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Mar 22, 2016, 9:50:22 AM3/22/16
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It seems that since chrome updated to version 49 the autocomplete in the console is using history, instead of (or as well as) inspecting defined object attributes. This is extremely annoying when working with an object name which has different meaning in different contexts. For example the "scope" object in an angularjs app. Is there a way to get the old autocomplete back?

Pavel Feldman

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Mar 22, 2016, 1:51:43 PM3/22/16
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There is no way to do that currently. I'm adding a "clear console history" into console menu.

On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Nate Dudenhoeffer <nduden...@gmail.com> wrote:
It seems that since chrome updated to version 49 the autocomplete in the console is using history, instead of (or as well as) inspecting defined object attributes. This is extremely annoying when working with an object name which has different meaning in different contexts. For example the "scope" object in an angularjs app. Is there a way to get the old autocomplete back?

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Nate Dudenhoeffer

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Mar 23, 2016, 7:09:22 AM3/23/16
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pfeldman, thanks for the reply. I don't think "clear console history" is the right solution to this problem. When debugging an angular app, you would have to clear the history every time you select a different element/directive. Would that also stop the up arrow from working too?

The two solutions I can think of are either an option to revert to the old autocomplete, or the console needs to keep track of the variable reference, not just the name.

Nate

On Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 12:51:43 PM UTC-5, pfeldman wrote:
There is no way to do that currently. I'm adding a "clear console history" into console menu.
On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Nate Dudenhoeffer <nduden...@gmail.com> wrote:
It seems that since chrome updated to version 49 the autocomplete in the console is using history, instead of (or as well as) inspecting defined object attributes. This is extremely annoying when working with an object name which has different meaning in different contexts. For example the "scope" object in an angularjs app. Is there a way to get the old autocomplete back?

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Nate Dudenhoeffer

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Mar 23, 2016, 8:21:14 AM3/23/16
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Pavel Feldman

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Mar 23, 2016, 4:31:31 PM3/23/16
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On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 4:09 AM, Nate Dudenhoeffer <nduden...@gmail.com> wrote:
pfeldman, thanks for the reply. I don't think "clear console history" is the right solution to this problem. When debugging an angular app, you would have to clear the history every time you select a different element/directive.

Could you elaborate on why this is necessary? I'm looking at the other issue as well.
 
Would that also stop the up arrow from working too?

The two solutions I can think of are either an option to revert to the old autocomplete, or the console needs to keep track of the variable reference, not just the name.

Nate

On Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 12:51:43 PM UTC-5, pfeldman wrote:
There is no way to do that currently. I'm adding a "clear console history" into console menu.
On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Nate Dudenhoeffer <nduden...@gmail.com> wrote:
It seems that since chrome updated to version 49 the autocomplete in the console is using history, instead of (or as well as) inspecting defined object attributes. This is extremely annoying when working with an object name which has different meaning in different contexts. For example the "scope" object in an angularjs app. Is there a way to get the old autocomplete back?

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Nate Dudenhoeffer

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Mar 24, 2016, 2:10:39 PM3/24/16
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consider this simple function that can be used with Array.sort for an array of similar objects:

function objetSortFn(prop) {
  return function (a, b) {
    if (a[prop] > b[prop]) {
      return 1;
    }
    if (a[prop] < b[prop]) {
      return -1;
    }
    // a must be equal to b
    return 0;
  };
}

Now lets say I have one array where each object is something like {name: 'xyz', value: 1} (object A), and another array where each object is { names: ['a', 'b','d'], something: 1} (object B).

Let say I have a breakpoint in that function. First I use that function to sort an array of B objects and want to extract the 3rd name element "a.name[3]". Now I go to sort A objects, and I get and type 
"a.na" and I get the suggestion of "a.name[3]". In this case both structures are simple enough that it becomes a minor inconvenience. 
When you are dealing with complex deeply nested objects the new functionality make it considerable more difficult to find that nested value you are looking for.


On Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 3:31:31 PM UTC-5, pfeldman wrote:
On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 4:09 AM, Nate Dudenhoeffer <nduden...@gmail.com> wrote:
pfeldman, thanks for the reply. I don't think "clear console history" is the right solution to this problem. When debugging an angular app, you would have to clear the history every time you select a different element/directive.

Could you elaborate on why this is necessary? I'm looking at the other issue as well.
 
Would that also stop the up arrow from working too?

The two solutions I can think of are either an option to revert to the old autocomplete, or the console needs to keep track of the variable reference, not just the name.

Nate

On Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 12:51:43 PM UTC-5, pfeldman wrote:
There is no way to do that currently. I'm adding a "clear console history" into console menu.
On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 6:44 AM, Nate Dudenhoeffer <nduden...@gmail.com> wrote:
It seems that since chrome updated to version 49 the autocomplete in the console is using history, instead of (or as well as) inspecting defined object attributes. This is extremely annoying when working with an object name which has different meaning in different contexts. For example the "scope" object in an angularjs app. Is there a way to get the old autocomplete back?

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Pavel Feldman

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Mar 24, 2016, 2:14:54 PM3/24/16
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Ah, so by " every time you select a different element/directive." you meant console evaluations. I see.

Nate
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Antonin Jares

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Mar 30, 2016, 7:30:28 AM3/30/16
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I agree with Nate. This feature gets extremely annoying really fast. E.g. in earlier version I could see what properties I could access on any object (if it was defined -> I could know that!) in a scope but now I have no idea because my history gets mixed in. I have to switch browsers until this feature can be turned off because it really slows down my work.

PhistucK

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Mar 30, 2016, 7:33:00 AM3/30/16
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I agree that it is confusing. A slightly different color (or a clock icon or watermark) could distinguish history versus members versus statements.


☆PhistucK

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 1:46 PM, Antonin Jares <jares....@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Nate. This feature gets extremely annoying really fast. E.g. in earlier version I could see what properties I could access on any object (if it was defined -> I could know that!) in a scope but now I have no idea because my history gets mixed in. I have to switch browsers until this feature can be turned off because it really slows down my work.

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Pavel Feldman

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Mar 30, 2016, 1:53:46 PM3/30/16
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On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 4:32 AM, PhistucK <phis...@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree that it is confusing. A slightly different color (or a clock icon or watermark) could distinguish history versus members versus statements.



Which is implemented in Canary as of last week.
 
☆PhistucK

On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 1:46 PM, Antonin Jares <jares....@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Nate. This feature gets extremely annoying really fast. E.g. in earlier version I could see what properties I could access on any object (if it was defined -> I could know that!) in a scope but now I have no idea because my history gets mixed in. I have to switch browsers until this feature can be turned off because it really slows down my work.

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PhistucK

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Mar 31, 2016, 3:33:10 PM3/31/16
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Oh... I did not notice a commit that does that.


☆PhistucK

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Jason Barone

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Apr 1, 2016, 1:53:05 PM4/1/16
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Sorry, not a Chrome Dev but I'm confused on the solution. The mixed in history so incredibly annoying I can't believe that was shipped in the first place. I don't want to distinguish between history and anything else. There should be a way to disable this in DevTools settings.

Antonin Jares

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Apr 1, 2016, 2:55:38 PM4/1/16
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+1
An option to turn this feature on/off seems best.

Noj Vek

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Apr 2, 2016, 2:06:58 PM4/2/16
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Please file a bug on that.

I imagine that it shouldn't be too hard to turn it off from the devtools settings page if the option was there.

What does the CDT team think?

Colin Richardson

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Apr 6, 2016, 6:53:24 AM4/6/16
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I just got caught out by this today.. I spent ages looking through my code looking to where the hell I am assigning "display" property to my testing "debugging" object..

But obviously some time in the past I had done a.display and a.display.id 
But the object I was assigning to a this time did not have a display property.

I was also looking for a.display=null or a.display = undefined;
since obviously the result of a.display was undefined... I never thought to do Object.keys(a); to see there was no "display" property at all and it was this mystical and annoying history mode.

an...@octanelending.com

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Apr 6, 2016, 2:32:34 PM4/6/16
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+1 to turn this feature OFF.

My team uses the Dev Tools console pretty heavily.  This new history-based feature has supplanted the far more useful autocomplete feature whose suggestions are based on the actual properties of the object.  Since JavaScript is a duck-typed language, the old autocompletion feature was far more useful, as it served as a poor man's object inspector.

The old behavior was also more far intuitive, as it followed the predominant pattern in other interactive consoles -- such as by pressing tab in node's repl and ipython.

While I think a history feature might be useful, I would recommend emulating the standard shell behavior of allowing us to search through history by pressing CTL+R, rather than replacing the older, more useful, more intuitive, feature.

Pavel Feldman

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Apr 6, 2016, 3:28:56 PM4/6/16
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Please check out how Chrome Canary mitigates a bigger part of the problem. It'll hit stable with M50 around Apr 19th.

Pavel

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Matt Benton

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Apr 7, 2016, 4:13:04 PM4/7/16
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+1 to disable this feature.

While I appreciate the effort to improve things from the Chrome DevTools team, but please provide an option to revert this back to what everyone is used to.

Before history was added to autocomplete, I was able to instantly understand the state of my application and objects by seeing what the console suggested as I typed. I've never needed to re-inspect or re-evaluate code that was more than 5 presses of my up arrow away. Now the autocomplete list is visually flooded with suggestions of everything I've typed in the past and placing these at the bottom of the list with a small icon does little to help. This becomes even more annoying when you have been inspecting deeply nested objects.
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Living Legacy

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Apr 11, 2016, 1:06:43 PM4/11/16
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This is painfully annoying. It's making my work take so much longer to complete. I'm relying on FireBug at the moment, which is great.. But my company doesn't support Firefox natively so I prefer to do my development directly in Chrome and IE.

Colin Richardson

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Apr 12, 2016, 3:12:25 AM4/12/16
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I noticed a setting has been pushed to the chromium repo to turn on and off auto complete history.. thank you very much for the fix..


On Tuesday, 22 March 2016 13:50:22 UTC, Nate Dudenhoeffer wrote:

Antonin Jares

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Apr 12, 2016, 3:16:11 AM4/12/16
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+1

Thank you

an...@octanelending.com

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Apr 19, 2016, 12:42:10 AM4/19/16
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I'd just like to throw some good karma your way because I think the fix showing a little console caret for every "historical" autocomplete suggestion is good UX.  It is a good compromise allowing me to discern what is my console history from what is my object's evaluated properties.

Kudos also for allowing us to turn the feature OFF.  This pleases the more purist amongst us.

Sincerely,
André

Philip Murphy

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Apr 29, 2016, 10:00:22 AM4/29/16
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See attached screen shot to see how to switch this feature off. My annoyance was that if you copied and pasted a variable into the console and hit enter to see if it existed, that it was forever in your history. Should add delete and different color feature to make this more user-friendly.


On Tuesday, 22 March 2016 13:50:22 UTC, Nate Dudenhoeffer wrote:
2016-04-29_144542.png

Martin Larsen

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May 24, 2016, 6:40:42 AM5/24/16
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See attached screen shot to see how to switch this feature off. My annoyance was that if you copied and pasted a variable into the console and hit enter to see if it existed, that it was forever in your history. Should add delete and different color feature to make this more user-friendly.

Thanks!!! You saved my day :) 
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