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Comment by dsalfdslfdsa | Hacker News Reader

I was recently browsing their docs, and kept finding references to choosing a "browser chrome" (options including Qt and AppKit). Is this some new usage of the word "chrome" that I'm not familiar with, or does it use chrome libraries?

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Google co-opted an already common term into a Proper Noun™.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Chrome

http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html

Netscape called it that and thus so does Mozilla. Try loading up `chrome://branding/content/about-logo.png` for an example of the chrome URI scheme in Firefox!

Around the turn of the century, the "Mozilla" browser used to support themes for its chrome, written in XUL [0], which also supported inline images. The themes were available in a repository called "Chrome Zone".

Google later appropriated also the name "Chrome Zone", for a chain of retail stores in the UK. [1]

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_Zone

Specifically google originally chose that name for chrome because one of their goals was reduction of chrome. They made a bit deal out of it when the browser was new, how it didn't have a bunch of menu bars or whatever

The Scott McCloud comic mentions this on page #24: https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_24.html

It's a usage that predates and conceivably inspired Google-brand Chrome (and by contrast arguably Rust?), referring to the UI parts of the browser rather than, I think, rendering and javascript and stuff.

The term "window chrome" is common to describe the parts of a window that are outside the client rectangle and managed by the window system (titlebar, scroll bars, resize widgets etc..). AFAIK the term also predates "Chrome, the browser" by a long time.

The "chrome" of an app is the part surrounding the main windows, like toolbars and the such.

IIRC when Chrome appeared, the name was chosen because it was a browser without chrome (ie: it used to be just the rendering windows with the url bar on top), differently from other browsers at the time.

As per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome:

>User interface chrome, the borders and widgets that frame the content part of a window

Firefox always referred to its user interface as the chrome (hence userchrome.css) and Google engineers decided that it should be funny to name their browser that.

>Is this some new usage of the word "chrome" that I'm not familiar with, or does it use chrome libraries?

Neither.

That's the old usage of the word "chrome", as far as I know.

It's "chrome" as in cars and bikes.

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