Could context menus be allowed to open an extension's Popup?

This can be achieved without compromising the philosophy of restricting Popup initiation to user actions.

For example, add a new property to the Context Menu Item and let the Popup page access the data which is currently made available to the Menu Item's onclick event. Developers could use something like...

in "background.js":

chrome.contextMenus.create({
  id: "myMenuItem",
  openPopup: true
  // popupPage: "altPopup.html"
  });


in "popup.js":

chrome.contextMenus.getInfo(function callback);


The onclick event would not fire when openPopup is set to True.


Why do this?

There are extensions which allow the user to get the definition of a selected word, or create a note from selected text or images. To create this functionality developers commonly request permission to inject scripts into every page the user visits. The alternative is to open a new tab and run the functionality in there. The former method leaves users not fully confident of what the extension has the potential to do with their data whereas the latter is a less appealing experience than could be achieved if the Popup was available.

Being able to open a Popup from a context menu would allow extensions developers to create a more consistent experience which can be used with confidence.