This is a short survey illustrating some of the essential aspects of the
theory of canonical extensions. In addition some topological results about
canonical extensions of lattices with additional operations in finitely
generated varieties are given. In particular, they are doubly algebraic
lattices and their interval topologies agree with their double Scott topologies
and make them Priestley topological algebras.
The canonical extension of a lattice is in an essential way a two-sided
completion. Domain theory, on the contrary, is primarily concerned with
one-sided completeness. In this paper, we show two things. Firstly, that the
canonical extension of a lattice can be given an asymmetric description in two
stages: a free co-directed meet completion, followed by a completion by
\emph{selected} directed joins.