So, we are debating debuggers here, along with a bit about inspectors.

I'd urge keeping the 'normal' case for both as simple as possible - no styling, no trying to make special views for each object that becomes the receiver, nothing like that. Focus on the operation of the tool. Stepping needs to be fast and most importantly, correct. Rely on as little as possible because the debugger is *what has to work when you've broken everything*.

If you want fancy extras, make them extras, and make them easy to open or activate or indeed close. Make the receiver & context inspectors the most basic kind with a button to swap them for a fancier one. We already have the 'inspect/explore' switch for inspectors, for example.

Fancy highlighting and colouring, or showing tiny thumbnails of images have no place in a lot of important debugging scenarios. They are certainly an obstruction when it is the thumbnail code or styling code that has to be debugged!

More generally it would be really nice if the styling stuff could be turned off/on easily. I tolerate it on recent Pi systems but only because it is a pain to faff around removing the package.

tim
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tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: IBLU: Ignore Basic Laws of Universe