Start Here: Background Reading

• 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

See Also: Design docs in source code

• https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/

General Architecture

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

UI Framework

• Overview
• GPU Accelerated Compositing in Chrome
• GPU Feature Status Dashboard
• Rendering Architecture Diagrams
• Graphics and Skia
• RenderText and Chrome UI text drawing
• GPU Command Buffer
• GPU Program Caching
• Compositing in Blink/WebCore: from WebCore::RenderLayer to cc::Layer
• Compositor Thread Architecture
• Rendering Benchmarks
• Impl-side Painting
• Video Playback and Compositor
• ANGLE architecture presentation

Input

Rendering

Feature-Specific

• about:conflicts
• Accessibility: An outline of current (and coming) accessibility support.
• Auto-Throttled Screen Capture and Mirroring
• Browser Window
• Chromium Print Proxy: Enables a cloud print service for legacy printers and future cloud-aware printers.
• Constrained Popup Windows
• Desktop Notifications
• DirectWrite Font Cache for Chrome on Windows
  
• DNS Prefetching: Reducing perceived latency by resolving domain names before a user tries to follow a link
• Embedding Flash Fullscreen in the Browser Window
• Extensions: Design documents and proposed APIs.
• Find Bar
• Form Autofill: A feature to automatically fill out an html form with appropriate data.
• Geolocation: Adding support for W3C Geolocation API using native WebKit bindings.
• IDN in Google Chrome
• IndexedDB (early draft)
• Info Bars
• Installer: Registry entries and shortcuts
• Instant
• Isolated Sites
• Linux Resources and Localized Strings: Loading data resources and localized strings on Linux.
• Media Router & Web Presentation API
  
• Memory Usage Backgrounder: Some information on how we measure memory in Chromium.
• Mouse Lock
• Omnibox Autocomplete: While typing into the omnibox, Chromium searches for and suggests possible completions.
• HistoryQuickProvider: Suggests completions from the user's historical site visits.
• Omnibox/IME Coordination
• Ozone Porting Abstraction
• Password Generation
• Pepper plugin implementation
• Plugin Power Saver
• Preferences
• Prerender
• Print Preview
• Printing
• Rect-based event targeting in views: Making it easier to target views elements with touch.
• Replace the modal cookie prompt
• SafeSearch
• Sane Time: Determining an accurate time in Chrome
• Secure Web Proxy
• Service Processes
• Site Isolation: In-progress effort to improve Chromium's process model for security between web sites.
• Software Updates: Courgette
• Sync
• Tab Helpers
• Tab to search: How to have the Omnibox automatically provide tab to search for your site.
• Tabtastic2 Requirements
• Temporary downloads
• Time Sources: Determining the time on a Chrome OS device
• TimeTicks: How our monotonic timer, TimeTicks, works on different OSes
• 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.
  
• User scripts: Information on Chromium's support for user scripts.
• Video
• WebSocket: Enables Web applications to maintain bidirectional communications with server-side processes.
• Web MIDI
• WebNavigation API internals

OS-Specific

• Android
• Java Resources on Android
• JNI Bindings
• WebView code organization
• Chrome OS
• See the Chrome OS design documents section.
• Mac OS X
• AppleScript Support
• BrowserWindowController Object Ownership
• Confirm to Quit
• Mac App Mode (Draft)
• Mac Fullscreen Mode (Draft)
• Mac NPAPI Plugin Hosting
• Mac specific notes on UI Localization
• Menus, Hotkeys, & Command Dispatch
• Notes from meeting on IOSurface usage and semantics
• OS X Interprocess Communication (Obsolete)
• Password Manager/Keychain Integration
• Sandboxing Design
• Tab Strip Design (Includes tab layout and tab dragging)
• Wrench Menu Buttons

Other

• 64-bit Support
• Layered Components
• Closure Compiling Chrome Code
• content module / content API
• Design docs that still need to be written (wiki)
• In progress refactoring of key browser-process architecture for porting
• Network Experiments
• Transitioning InlineBoxes from floats to LayoutUnits

Full listing of all sub-pages: