The chrome.scripting API is used to programmatically inject CSS and JavaScript to alter the behavior and appearance of the websites. Think about it like this, a dynamic way of injecting content scripts and content styles as opposed from doing it via the manifest.json declaration. You can read the offlicial provide by the Google Chrome Extension Team here: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/scripting How to declare…

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The chrome.action API is used to control everything to do with the your extensions icon found in the toolbar. It encompasses the title, icon, when it is clicked and much more. You can read the Chrome.API documentation on actions more details here https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/action In pervious article we wrote about Understanding Chrome Extensions Permissions we briefly touched on how to declared it…

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The chrome.declarativeContent API is an API use to take specific actions depending on the contents of the page without the use of the host_permissions in the manifest.json file or the help of the content scripts. Due to this the actions that can be trigged are limited; You can find documentation of the chrome.declarativeContent API here: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/declarativeContent How to declare it in the Manifest.json {…

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The chrome.tabs API is used for interacting with your browser tabs. You can do all sort of this with this API from creating new tabs, rearranging them, redirecting to a new URL, and even communicate to the content scripts running on those tabs. In this article we are going to look at several functions the chrome.tabs API provides. However,…

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By using the chrome.identity API it enables use to identify/retrieve signed-in users, authenticate via Google OAuth or other social OAuth options, get access token tokens and more. In this article we are going to cover how to initial a login sequence for Facebook and Google using the chrome.identity API. You see the official documentation on the API here: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/identity How…

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In this article we are going to look at the chrome.windows API. Its an API used for interacting with the browser windows. Similar to the chrome.tabs API you can use the API to create and change browser windows. Types of Windows There are different types of windows you can create. Popup or Panel These are borderless windows. You can not…

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Context Menu is the menu that appears when a user right clicks (alternative clicks) on an element in a webpage. In this article we will cover the chrome.contextMenus API. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/ui/context-menu. An API responsible for context menus for chrome extensions. There are 4 major functions normally used in this API chrome.contextMenus.create, chrome.contextMenus.update chrome.contextMenus.removeAll and chrome.contextMenus.onClicked.addListener. 3 of which, as you can see handle displaying the contextMenu and…

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The chrome.storage API is an API that store persistent data, get and modify the data. In our opinion it is one of the most important API used in chrome extensions projects. See the Chrome Storage API documentation for more info Unlike a lot of the other APIs we’ve looked at in previous articles chrome.storage works in all parts of the extensions; content…

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The chrome.alarms API is an API use to schedule code to execute at a preset time and/or periodically. See the Chrome Alarms API documentation for more info. How is Chrome Alarms API different from setInterval or setTimeout? setInterval and setTimeout are functions that are used to schedule code to run in the future and periodically as well. However the difference become apparent when we start…

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The chrome notifications API is responsible for displaying different types of what is called rich notifications in your users’ system tray. Chrome Notifications API works well with the Web-push Notifications (Google Cloud Message) but more on that in our next article about Understanding Chrome Extensions GCM. Although we can choose what kind of template of…

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