

Chrome Extensions To Use Less System Resources - twapi
http://www.browsomatic.com/2012/06/chrome-extensions-to-use-less-system.html

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pronoiac
The title might be clearer as _"will_ use less resources." I expected to see,
say, Flashblock, which would be an extension that helps use less memory.

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Achshar
So will they be eventually killing off background pages? Background html page
is very important for certain types of apps. A media player for example which
uses the page to play background music even if the app tab is closed.

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wnoise
I want such an app to stop when I close the tab.

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Achshar
Chrome has an option to disable that. But that's not the point. What i am
trying to say is that there are valid reasons for html background page instead
of just a script.

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rsanchez1
This is similar to webOS background apps. You have the main app card, but you
can also launch a dashboard, where the app will live in the notification area
and you can pull up a little bar at the bottom of the screen with restricted
functionality. The dashboard would be like a background page, and music apps
often too advantage of the dashboard to display player controls in the
notification area. You could throw away the main app card, but your music will
still be running in the dashboard, and you can pull up the dashboard to
quickly and easily play, pause, and change songs.

This is certainly a use case for music apps on Chrome as well, so I do hope
they keep background pages, while encouraging use of event pages when
appropriate. For example, I've been thinking about using a background page to
check for updates every five minutes and notify users whenever a feed has new
articles in their Google Reader. But now, I can use Event Pages instead.
Chrome is giving me a more efficient way of checking for updates, but I do
hope they keep background pages for the use cases they would be needed.

Incidentally, webOS also had functionality like Event Pages, where you could
register a few different kinds of events, such as launch to search or timers,
and webOS would call a designated script to respond to the event. The script
can do ajax requests and either launch a dashboard (background page), launch
the main app, or do nothing and webOS will then kill the script, just like
Chrome will kill the event page if it is idle for a few seconds.

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Achshar
I am the author of an app that does exactly what you said.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fddboknafkepdchido...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fddboknafkepdchidokknkeidnaejnkh)

If chrome eventually drops background html page then my app won't be half as
functional as it is today.

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jaredsohn
While this is a great thing to do, a large portion of Chrome extension memory
usage is due to the JavaScript that gets embedded into every open tab. [i.e.
O(1) vs. O(n)]

