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Comment by nachtigall | Hacker News Reader

I do find the name – "containers" – a bit confusing. "Contextual identities" would seem like a better fit, because that's what it will be used for.

I am reading this name also on other places, surprised Mozilla sticked with "containers":

* https://blog.mozilla.org/tanvi/2016/06/16/contextual-identit...

* https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...

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It's only confusing if you're a technical person -- the sort of person who hears "containers" and thinks "oh, Docker." For laypeople who don't have that association already burned into their brain, it's a simple label that pretty clearly communicates the purpose of the feature -- much less scary-complicated-sounding than "contextual identities."

Yes this, we did some brainstorming and solicited user feedback about names and decided Containers makes sense for a general audience. Docker Containers and 'Contextual Idendities' are kind of inside baseball.

Why not "Persona"? ;)

I kid, but it makes sense. Containers describes the implementation, not the user experience or benefit.

(Reusing the name "Persona" for any new project is a running joke at Mozilla. :)

> Containers describes the implementation, not the user experience or benefit.

This. Sure, "contextual identities" sounds too academic, but who knows, maybe Containers (as a word) will become as ubiquious as Tabs are today (very common word in German today): Hey, dude, open a container ;)

I like persona too, or facade, or anything else that shows this is about what you present to the world... but most users won't think of it that way. Theyll think of it a keeping a bunch of sites in a box. They don't think about how the internet sees them, only how they see the internet.

"Persona" was a jest towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona

I know, but it still works with the idea that a userprofile has multiple personas.

I'd have gone with "facades" or "partitions" personally, because I'm seeing it as the divisions of your identity. But I'm thinking to a user they don't think about how the site sees them, they think about how they see the site, and keep their set of sites in boxes.

I would have used "facets".

In other words, you found that deliberately misleading (and therefore attracting) a public that only knows "containers" as a buzzword was more important than reducing ambiguity in the technical world. Nice. Ya coulda used cans, bottles, flask, vat, pot, vessel, tub, ... etc, etc.

if you're a technical person you don't associate containers with docker. That technology is much older than docker and even with that there're so many alternatives than docker is just one more.

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