Question

I want to create an addon for chrome. When clicked it should redirect the tab with a modified URL.

I am using this in a background page in a manifest:

<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
    chrome.tabs.getCurrent(function (tab) {
        var tabUrl = encodeURIComponent(tab.url);
        var tabTitle = encodeURIComponent(tab.title);
        chrome.tabs.update(tab.id, {url: "http://xyz.com/surf/browse.php?u=" + tabUrl});
    });
</script>

And this is my manifest:

{
    "name": "XYZ Surf",
    "version": "1.0",
    "description": "just info",
    "background_page": "redirect.html",
    "homepage_url":"http://www.xyz.com/surf",
    "browser_action": {
        "default_icon": "icon.png",
        "default_title": "abc."
    },
    "permissions": ["tabs"]
}

All I want is that when the addon button is clicked then the user must be redirected to the modified URL. (Please explain completely and please do not refer to Google codes because it’s going through my head.)

(I have been looking up for all answers and did find one but not getting it.)

Answer 1

Instead of doing that in the background page, you should listen on the browser action event [1]:

chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(function(tab) {
  var tabUrl = encodeURIComponent(tab.url);
  var tabTitle = encodeURIComponent(tab.title);
  chrome.tabs.update(tab.id, {url: "http://xyz.com/surf/browse.php?u=" + tabUrl});
});