Open Safari / Google Chrome developer tools programmatically from JavaScript

Question

I'm looking for a way to open the WebKit “developer tools” from a script attached to a web-page. I need solutions for both Google Chrome and Safari, that will open the developer-tools pane if it's not already open, and (hopefully, if you can figure out how) also switch to a particular tab/section of said pane upon opening.

(Use-case, if anyone's interested: I want to open the console.log output-window if there's been an error and a developer is looking at the page; this particular page will be the output of some JavaScript unit-tests.)

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I'm setting a bounty on this question because it's obviously one that hasn't been answered to anyone's satisfaction before, and the answer is a hairy one. Please don't answer it unless you have a real answer that both: 1) works in both browsers, and 2) doesn't require private extension APIs that won't work from a static web-page.

See (related, but specific to Chrome, and extensions): Can I programmatically open the devtools from a Google Chrome extension?

Answer 1

Simply: You can't.

The Dev Tools are not sandboxed (unlike any web page), thus granting sandboxed environments the power to open and control an unsandboxed environment is a major security design flaw.

I hope this answers your question :-)