Browser Developer Tools

Browser developer tools are built-in browser features that allow developers to inspect, debug, audit, and tweak webpages in real-time.  
This section will cover tools, and resources that will help you set up a process to inspect your site.

Enabling browser tools helps you to:

1. Debug runtime errors in your javascript/vite scripts
2. View the HTML as it will be rendered in the webpage (DOM)
3. Monitor network traffic to and from your webpage, this is particularly useful for checking actual HTTP requests with web APIs (CWMS Data API)
4. Run 508 accessibility, performance, SEO, and best practices scans through Lighthouse

If your "inspect" is grayed out when you right click a page in Google Chrome, this How To is for you!

To gain access to the developer tools for Google Chrome you need to be added to your division's group policy which allows your workstation access to the tools. (This is the right click inspect) 

First, get your computer's hostname, open command prompt and type 
hostname

EDIT: 07/21/2026 - Read this before continuing
Do NOT use the CWMS ticket to submit. Instead create a general ticket see below

Create the general ticket with these instructions:
1. Assign ticket to DLL-CEIT-RITS-EOB-EMAIL

2. Open your command prompt and type hostname  or retrieve it from the property sticker on your computer
3.  Fill out the form with the following:

Additional Info:

     add the following hostnames to "ACE-IT STIG Exception - ### Browser Settings" where ### should be your DIVSION (i.e. SWD)

       hostname1 - person's email of computer

Once this ticket completes and your group policy updates (see below), you should be able to:

F12 or Right Click > Inspect

Gives you

TIPS:

If you are in talks with G6, and you know when they apply this. You can force your system to update the group policy immediately instead of waiting for the changes to propagate from the domain server. 

also, if you find that your inspect is missing on a system (hostname) that you previously requested. This might also be helpful. The system's default policy is to not have these tools. But getting your policy settings from the server would fix this. 

For both of these you would run this in a NON admin command prompt

gpupdate /force 

This forces your group policy to update from the domain server