Building Browser Extensions: Create Modern Extensions for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023

M. FrisbieBuilding Browser Extensionshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8725-5_4

4. Browser Extension Architecture

Matt Frisbie¹  

(1)

California, CA, USA

 

Understanding how the various elements of browser extensions work is important, but even more important is understanding how they work together. The architecture of browser extensions is unusual and multifaceted:

• They lack centralization and instead are formed by a network of distributed elements: background scripts, content scripts, popup and options pages, and devtools pages.

• They can manage the complex browser page infrastructure that spans across multiple windows and tabs. Because content scripts can run ...