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Comment by phatfish

18 hours ago

If i remember chrome:// used to have special meaning in Firefox (and probably well before that), and was used to tweak UI settings. I always assumed this was where Google took the name from.

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phatfish

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rsynnott  18 hours ago

Chrome is a now-somewhat-archaic term for GUI (or specifically the actual elements of the GUI, not the concept), and Netscape/Mozilla did use the term a lot. Google claims that their browser is called Chrome because of an association with fast cars (presumably Google was keen to market it to extremely old people, chrome not having been a particularly big thing in cars for a very long time).

  • neilv  17 hours ago

    > Google claims that their browser is called Chrome because of an association with fast cars

    FWIW, before Google Chrome, Firefox was originally Firebird (changed for name collision reasons), and Mozilla had broken off the rest of the Netscape-ish "communications suite" into Thunderbird, both arguably named after cars.

    Besides the use of chrome by Netscape/Mozilla that you mention, roughly around that time I heard it used by HCI people to refer flashy GUI design for cosmetics rather than function, and specifically to changes in a particular MacOS version.

    I wonder whether Netscape/Mozilla jokingly then used it as a term for the GUI toolkit "trim" around the browser page. Given that this was a transition to the important stuff being on the Web page, rather than your computer. And/or whether Google did.

    • pseudalopex  15 hours ago

      > FWIW, before Google Chrome, Firefox was originally Firebird (changed for name collision reasons), and Mozilla had broken off the rest of the Netscape-ish "communications suite" into Thunderbird, both arguably named after cars.

      Mozilla named the web program Phoenix for rebirth. A company objected. Mozilla renamed it Firebird because phoenix was a fire bird. They named the mail program Thunderbird for similarity of Firebird.

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    • Findecanor  14 hours ago

      Between Netscape Navigator and Firefox, their web browser was called simply "Mozilla". It supported GUI themes in XML with images which were officially called "Chrome". Mozilla also hosted user-contributed themes on a web site called "Chrome Zone".

      The browser was considered slow and bloated however, and when Firefox came, its lack of theme support was perceived as part of it having been de-bloated.

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  • PunchyHamster  7 hours ago

    > (presumably Google was keen to market it to extremely old people, chrome not having been a particularly big thing in cars for a very long time).

    Not wanting to admit term was taken from competing browser is perfectly fine explanation