How to Inspect Website Elements in Your Browser
If you’ve ever been curious to see what your page would look like with different styles, but without having to apply any changes, you’ll be delighted to hear that there is a way for you to do so. In fact, your browser comes with a handy tool that will enable you to inspect website elements. Like this, you will be able to see the different ways your content can look like.
In the text below we will provide you with all the essentials of how to inspect website elements while working in WordPress.
What Exactly Is Inspect Element?
All latest web browsers come with a set of integrated tools that show the CSS, JavaScript and HTML code for a particular page. Inspect tool lets web developers edit the code in their web browser if needed. This gives them the possibility of previewing any changes without actually tampering with any of the code. In other words, they are the only ones who can see these changes in their browser.
This option can especially be beneficial for those who want to implement changes to their WordPress website but would like to preview them first before allowing them to take effect. For example, if you’re a blog owner, and you wish to see how WordPress excerpt of any of your posts would be displayed in your browser, you can easily do this with the help of this tool.
Not only is this useful for website owners, but also for any writer, marketer, support agent, and anyone else who takes interest in seeing how the content they work on could look like.
How to Inspect Element in Google Chrome
There are two ways to access this tool. You can either right-click on any area of your web page and select inspect, or click CTRL + Shift + I on your keyboard.
After you do this first step, your browser will automatically split into two, and the source code of your page will appear in the smaller window. In this window, you will see HTML on the left and CSS on the right.
Different areas of the web page will be highlighted as you drag the mouse over the HTML source. If you end up right-clicking on a specific element of your web page, then that element will be highlighted.
How to Edit and Debug the Code
With Inspect Element tool, you can edit both HTML and CSS. To edit the HTML, just double click on any area in the HTML source code and then edit the code.
Doing the same is possible in CSS area as well. To add a new style rule, just click on the + icon at the top.
All the changes you make will immediately be displayed in your browser.
Once again, we have to emphasize that none of these changes will be saved. You can inspect any website elements you like for as long as you want, but this is only a debugging tool that won’t let you apply any actual changes to the code. In other words, all of your changes will disappear once you reload your page.
That’s why, if you actually want to make the changes, you will have to access your WordPress theme’s stylesheet and edit the code there. However, we have to note that you should create a child theme for these purposes.
Console Area for Finding Errors
Another important function of the Inspect Element tool is a Console area. This particular area displays all the existing errors on your site. Therefore, if you want to debug an error on your page, checking out this area to inspect the errors could be of value to you.
Conclusion
Learning how to inspect website elements is not only useful for your work, but it can also save up time of your technical support team if you already know what your issue is. Since there are multiple benefits to this powerful tool, we recommend that you try using it by following our guide.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
