How can I inspect an element with vimperator/pentadactyl?

Question

I'd like to be able to inspect an element (i.e. a link) with the built-in Firefox inspection tool, similar to right-clicking on an element and selecting "Inspect Element," only I'd like to be able to do it with Vimperator/Pentadactyl, with the keyboard. Is there a way to do that?

Answer 1

I was actually looking for this feature in Pentadactyl a few days ago, but like Ehvince, I couldn't find it in the documentation. I'm sure a plugin can be written for it, but I tried to find a workaround for now.

The closest I could get was to use extended hint mode to open the context (right click) menu somewhere on the page, and choose "Inspect element" from there. By default, it's at ;c and shows the default hints (for links, text areas, and so on).

You can set the extended hint tags to your desired CSS selectors with the eht (or extendedhinttags) option, just like with hinttags. To add hint tag selectors specifically for the context menu mode, you would do:

:set eht+=[c]:a,div,p,span

That will look kind of messy as it hints at every div on the page—you may want to be more specific with your selectors to suit your needs—but it works.

It would be awesome to write a developer plugin for Pentadactyl with features such as this one. One day, some day.

More information

Pentadactyl Help - ‘extendedhinttags’ option
Pentadactyl Help - Hints (and extended hints)

Answer 2

Firefox (Version 34 at least, not sure about earlier verisons), has a built in option to show the Inspector with Ctrl-Shift-c.