I'm confused.
I promise I'll let this go, but I just want to clear up any confusion, and I think I can help here. So when you "go to a webpage," typically, what's actually happening is that the webpage's server (a computer), is sending your computer an HTML file. The section of that file for you last comment, in reality, actually looks like this:
That is the actual, underlying code that
is the comment on the page. This HTML code is then interpreted by your browser (the program on your computer you view the internet with), so that when it sees:
<strong>Reply #8 on:</strong>
it instead renders:
Reply #8 on:Thus, there is an in-between step, between when the webpage's server gives your browser the code, where the browser renders the code, and then it shows up on your screen.
An extension is an
extra set of instructions in that rendering process. So, for example, I could instruct the browser that when it sees a <strong> tag, to
not render it in bold, but instead, say, render it as blue. If I gave my browser those instructions, then when my browser reads "<strong>Reply #8 on:</strong>" it will instead render:
Reply #8 on:A browser extension is just that. It's a series of instructions that tell
my computer (and only my computer), to change the way it
renders the code sent to be from the website's server. Everything that is happening is only happening on my computer, but when I package those instructions into a Firefox extension, I can share those instructions with other people, if they want to re-render the page in the way that I do.