Chromium Design Documents

 

Design Documents

Start here:

• Multi-process Architecture: Describes the high-level architecture of Chromium
  Note: Most of the rest of the design documents assume familiarity with the concepts explained in this document.
  
  
• How Chromium Displays Web Pages: Bottom-to-top overview of how WebKit is embedded in Chromium

Architecture

• Process Models: Our strategies for creating new renderer processes
• Conventions and patterns for multi-platform development
  
• Inter-process Communication: How the browser, renderer, and plugin processes communicate
• Threading: How to use threads in Chromium
• Multi-process Resource Loading: How pages and images are loaded from the network into the renderer
• Security Architecture: How Chromium's sandboxed rendering engine helps protect against malware
• Extension Security Architecture: How the extension system helps reduce the severity of extension vulnerabilities
  
• Plugin Architecture
  
• Profile Architecture
  
• Sandbox
• Startup
  
• SafeBrowsing

Also see the documentation for V8, which is the JavaScript engine used within Chromium.

UI Framework

• Views framework: Our UI layout layer used on Windows/Chrome OS.
• views Windowing system: How to build dialog boxes and other windowed UI using views.
• Aura: Chrome's next generation hardware accelerated UI framework, and the new ChromeOS window manager built using it.
• NativeControls: using platform-native widgets in views.

Feature-specific

• Chromium Print Proxy: Enables a cloud print service for legacy printers and future cloud-aware printers.
• Browser Window
• Info Bars
• Find Bar
• UI Mirroring Infrastructure: Describes the UI framework in ChromeViews that allows mirroring the browser UI in RTL locales such as Hebrew and Arabic.
• UI Localization: Describes how localized strings get added to Chromium.
  
• Constrained Popup Windows
• Memory Usage Backgrounder: Some information on how we measure memory in Chromium.
• DNS Prefetching: Reducing perceived latency by resolving domain names before a user tries to follow a link
• Form Autofill: A feature to automatically fill out an html form with appropriate data.
• Graphics:
  • GPU Accelerated Compositing in Chrome
  • Rendering Architecture Diagrams
  • Graphics and Skia
    
  • GPU Command Buffer
    
• Omnibox Autocomplete: While typing into the omnibox, Chromium searches for and suggests possible completions.
  • HistoryQuickProvider: Suggests completions from the user's historical site visits.
    
• Network stack:
  • Network Stack Objectives
  • Crypto
  • Disk Cache
  • Out of Process Proxy Resolving Draft [unimplemented]
  • Proxy Settings and Fallback
  • Debugging network proxy problems
  • HTTP Authentication
  • SSL Client Authentication
  • View network internals tool
  • Make the web faster with SPDY pages
  • Cookie storage and retrieval
• Web Socket: Enables Web applications to maintain bidirectional communications with server-side processes.
• Tab to search: How to have the Omnibox automatically provide tab to search for your site.
• User scripts: Information on Chromium's support for user scripts.
• Extensions: Design documents and proposed APIs.
• Accessibility: An outline of current (and coming) accessibility support.
  
• Linux Resources and Localized Strings: Loading data resources and localized strings on Linux.
• Tabtastic2 Requirements
• Printing
• Software Updates: Courgette
• Sync
• Desktop Notifications
  
• Video
• Geolocation: Adding support forW3C Geolocation API using native WebKit bindings.
  
• IDN in Google Chrome
• IndexedDB (early draft)
• Replace the modal cookie prompt
• Pepper plugin implementation
• Temporary downloads
  
• Print Preview
• about:conflicts
  
• Secure Web Proxy
• Prerender
• Service Processes
• Multiple Profiles
• Omnibox/IME Coordination
• Mouse Lock
• Preferences
• Reserved Keys

Mac OS X

• Sandboxing Design
• Password Manager/Keychain Integration
• Mac specific notes on UI Localization
• Command Dispatching
• Tab Strip Design (Includes tab layout and tab dragging)
• BrowserWindowController Object Ownership
• AppleScript Support
  
• Wrench Menu Buttons
• Confirm to Quit
• Draft document on Mac App Mode
• Draft document on Mac Fullscreen Mode
• OS X Interprocess Communication (Obsolete)

Testing

• Layout test results dashboard
• Generic theme for Test Shell
  
• Moving LayoutTests fully upstream

Other

• In progress refactoring of key browser-process architecture for porting
• 64-bit Support
• Network Experiments
• Design docs that still need to be written (wiki)