Communicating Browser Extension and external application

I'm trying to connect a browser extension (Firefox, Chrome, IE...) with an external applicat开发者_StackOverflowion. Using a non-polling system to notify the messages between the components.

I've already seen several approaches, but I'm not sure which ones are possible and which ones are the best.

One solution could be trying to use a IPC (Os-dependant) solution, as named pipes or sockets, but I'm not sure if I can open a named pipe in a firefox or chrome extension. Moreover, I don't know if there are any "event based" system not to need polling as a mechanism for handling the communication.

The other solution (only if I use firefox) is to use XPCOM, I think with this approach, I should instantiate a XPCOM component, implemented in the browser extension, from the External Application. I think should need the XPCOM thing as a dependency in my External Application, right?

But, using this method, is it possible to handle the communication in a asynchronous way?

Thanks in advance ;)