I can't have an extension remove every line that contains the string "google" if it can't see every line. It'd still have to be able to access all the content to be able to parse through it for a match.
Sure you could. The browser could have an API that says "give me a list of regexps and substitutions" and then the extension supplies that list, and the browser itself does the parsing and processing. This is flexible because the extension can specify the modifications.
It's like a pipeline in Bash. You could work with an end-user to build some patterns to match, then pass them to "grep" or "perl" for processing, and neither the user nor shell need to be privy to a file's contents.
Comments
Conceivably, this could mostly be accomplished without the extension being able to see all content. Such as manipulation by regexp.
I can't have an extension remove every line that contains the string "google" if it can't see every line. It'd still have to be able to access all the content to be able to parse through it for a match.
Sure you could. The browser could have an API that says "give me a list of regexps and substitutions" and then the extension supplies that list, and the browser itself does the parsing and processing. This is flexible because the extension can specify the modifications.
It's like a pipeline in Bash. You could work with an end-user to build some patterns to match, then pass them to "grep" or "perl" for processing, and neither the user nor shell need to be privy to a file's contents.