Changing the page action and browser action popup page

[Sam Kerner]

Chrome Extension Developers,

Page and browser actions can have a popup, set in the manifest, that opens when the user clicks the extension's icon:
{
 ...
 "browser_action": {
   ...
   "popup": "popup.html"        // optional
 },
 ...
}

The dev channel includes two new methods that allow you to dynamically change this popup:

  chrome.pageAction.setPopup(object details)
  chrome.browserAction.setPopup(object details)

Here is a small example:

chrome.tabs.getSelected(null, function(tab) {
  // When the browser action is clicked, set the popup for |tab|.
  chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
    chrome.browserAction.setPopup({
      tabId: tab.id,          // Set the new popup for this tab.

      popup: 'a_popup.html'   // Open this html file within the popup.
    });
  });

});

Setting the popup to the empty string ('') disables the popup.  Event chrome.(page|browser)Action.onClicked will fire when the user clicks on the action's icon, if no popup is set.  

This enhancement should be in the stable channel in version 5.0. Like all new API additions, it will not work on older versions of chrome.  You can prevent users of older chrome versions from installing your extension using the "minimum_chrome_version" property in your manifest:

{

  ...

  "minimum_chrome_version": "5.0"

}

Details on the minimum version property are here: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/manifest.html#minimum_chrome_version

As always, let us know of any issues you find.

Sam

[Weiller Santos]

skerner how should I do the popup.html ?