I just stumbled upon a nice little power-user innovation in Chrome’s Web Inspector.

In Safari, and previously in Chrome, when editing CSS properties, you’d get a usual editing typeahead for the property name, and then the same on the other side for the property value.

In newer versions of Chrome, the typeahead menu works as before on the right side. However, the menu on the left side also includes the right side.

I think this is really clever in this context – not just to speed you up, but also to aid understanding. Just like the inert mouse up and down in the previous post could serve as a safe “peek” into the values, this new interaction can quickly allow you to explore the CSS space if you are curious, or if you only lightly remember part of the name, or even just one of the values.

This blog is authored in Apple Notes, and some time ago Notes added quick linking via typing >>, and that has a similar effect: The interactions are so nimble and precise that it is very easy to link to something, but a nice side effect is that it also feels very welcoming just to type a few letters to remind yourself of a title of an article, and then cancel out.

The downside of the Chrome change is, well, more stuff matching, but I think the audience for this UI is going to be okay with that.