Specifically, I'm evaluating all of the images on a page to see if they have a certain attribute, and then adding some new <divs> to the DOM based on those attributes. Must I wait for document.ready to fire before performing these modifications in order to be guaranteed that Chrome has loaded all of the necessary pieces of the DOM?
The problem I'm running into is that sometimes document.ready takes a short while to fire and the user is already browsing around the page, wondering why my extension hasn't yet had any effect. The problem usually only lasts a moment, but it's enough to be annoying.
If I don't bother waiting for document.ready, and instead immediately process the document, everything seems to work; but I wonder if I'm just getting lucky.