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Comment by iotscale | Hacker News Reader

I think Chrome was (maybe still is?) also the name of Firefox's GUI or something like that. I remember being confused when Google Chrome first came out.

Edit: I thought more about this and remembered someone on the Firefox Addons site complained that the author of "lesschrome" (an extension which hides the "chrome" automatically) was being jealous(!) of Google Chrome. Couldn't find the comment and the following funny discussion though.

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Google's name is a joke. When Chrome first came out, it hardly had any chrome, when compared to other browsers out there. Tabs in the title bar, a single text entry field, that's it. Everybody else had 150px of chrome before the web page started. So they called it after the thing it didn't have.

Similarly, you can't see the pixels on a Chromebook Pixel and Google Glass are glasses without actual glasses.

It's not a joke. It's a smart choice that makes the brain think about the chrome's content, just like a frame implies a painting. A dictionary definition I found for the word is: "chromium-plated or other bright metallic trim, as on an automobile" [1].

[1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/chrome

Exactly. In a very similar vein, Gravity is possibly my favourite movie name of all time. (Along with its tagline, "Don't let go", which is the exact opposite of appropriate for most of the movie.) Some names have a good reason for looking silly at first glance.

Side note: Gravity is such a great movie. I love it's simplicity. It's a monster movie with (essentially) 2 characters and the setting is the monster. Then brings this incredibly simple vision to life without feeling sparse or experimental.

This even extends to the title:tagline as you mention. Four words, "Gravity: Don't let go", efficiently conveys the whole tone of the film.

I believe the person you are replying to did not literally mean it's a joke. "Tongue-in-cheek".

Historically "Chrome" refers to the shell of a web-browser that wraps the layout engine. Both Netscape and Microsoft used the word (internally at least) for this effect, while later Google would co-opt the term entirely for their product name.

But yes, Firefox's user-stylesheet for XUL is called 'chrome.css' (or 'userchrome.css', I forget).

TIL, thanks for the clarification.

I miss being able to create chromeless browser windows in IE. You could complete control the GUI. I think it was removed because of security reasons of being able to trick users into thinking it was a native OS window.

I guess you can do that even with a simple Windows Forms application that has a full size web view?

Yes, `userChrome.css` in `chrome` folder in Firefox user profile folder [0].

As opposed to `userContent.css` (located in the same directory) for injecting user level stylesheets to content document cascade.

[0] http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserChrome.css

Chrome is a common term that means the parts of application user interface that aren't representing the document (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface#User_...). So window borders, menus, browser address bar, tabs and such. This is the meaning of the word used in Firefox.

I guess that was my only exposure to it with that meaning, so I had assumed it was something specific to Firefox. Many others were too, I remember some people suggesting that Google stole the name Chrome from Firefox on some forums back when it first came out. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, especially in the light of this knowledge, I know.

Exactly. Which is why Google Chrome makes sense. If you think of the web app you're using as the primary application (Calendar, for example), instead of the browser, then the browser is just the chrome around it. And this is Chrome from Google (as opposed to the chrome from Firefox). And if you use Google in Chrome, it's the chrome around Google too. Since Google apps are web-based, they need Chrome, and since Google wants to give the best experience possible for their own apps, they'd like you to use the Google Chrome for Google.

Ok I'm done.

> If you think of the web app you're using as the primary application (Calendar, for example), instead of the browser, then the browser is just the chrome around it.

This goes even more if you considered how complex browser UIs were getting. Here's IE6:

http://static.myce.com/images_posts/2014/12/myce-internet-ex...

Oddly enough, Netscape 6 / Mozilla Browser seems to have been one of the first browsers to start paring down the UI - this looks a lot like Google Chrome today:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/Netscape_6.1....

Which makes sense as Netscape 4 was doing things like adding a 'Shop' button to the browser toolbar.

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