My 'page_action' => 'default_popup' is not updating

The page set as default_popup for my page_action is also displayed as sidebar_action This file consists of a series of <section id="section-name" hidden> so the HTML file will look all empty if manually opened in a browser.

However my content_script has a procedure trivially called Startup() that will sendMessage with the actions to be performed. On the other end, the sidebar/page_action there is a script to selectively enable such panels.

This is working only for the sidebar, my page_action popup remains stuck at initial state with all disabled panels, hence not showing. Why aren’t both updated equally?

Popup and sidebar pages are only loaded while visible. So you are likely sending messages while the page isn’t loaded.