January 25, 2011

Chrome's New Sad Tab Page

The latest Chromium builds include a new sad tab page that replaces the famous "aw, snap!" message with "he's dead, Jim!". The message continues: "Something caused this page to be killed , either because the operating system ran out of memory, or for some other reason. To continue, press Reload or go to another page." To see the page, just type about:kill in the address bar after opening a new tab.

"He's dead, Jim!" is a catchphrase used by Leonard H. McCoy, a character from Star Trek. "The line has entered popular culture as a general metaphor, with uses as diverse as descriptions of an unresponsive electronic circuit, an example of how to add an audio file to function as an alert sound in a computer system, and an illustrative quote regarding how to know if one's opponent has been destroyed in an action hero game."


Here's the old sad tab page:


{ Thanks, Chen. }

24 comments:

  1. I don't why, but on my about page, the dead tab icon has a bullet in the forehead, and blood..

    Here's a screenshot:
    http://maparadar.com/Bullet%20Tab.png

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  2. The passive language in the new box is interesting, too. Chrome's clearly not taking much responsibility for this crash.

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  3. Bahaha, just checked it out. Mine has a bullet hole tooo Israel!

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  4. That's just too funny.

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  5. I prefer the "Aw snap!". Not every one knows who's jim. But I liked how they thoroughly explain the reason why it crashed.

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  6. Mine also shows the bullet hole as well... Much nicer then the old message too. :)

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  7. Please check my original screenshot: http://www.guao.hk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/chrome_webpage_is_dead.png there is a bullet hole at Mr. Folder's head

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    Replies
    1. He's not a folder he's a tab (two tabs actually).

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  8. in Iron about:kill doesn't work. about:crash works though

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  9. How do you "press Reload"?! You can either "press F5" or "click Reload".

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  10. Why the capital D in Dead? It's a full sentence and correct capitalisation should be used.

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  11. Funny, but now wording is tl;dr.

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  12. At the risk of sounding pedantic, Bones never actually says the exact words "He's dead, Jim."

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  13. Bones did say "He's dead Jim", many times. Maybe you're thinking of the phrase "Beam me up Scotty"? That one never was used in the show!

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  14. How ridiculous is this - I saw the screen when I pressed restart - just for an instant and though it was some kind of virus - spent 25 mins - no wasted 25 mins trying to find out what the hell was going on only to find it was bloody google - grrrrrrr

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  15. Unfortunately, the portuguese translation doesn't do the quote justice. The translator obviously didn't watch Star Trek: The Original series - He replaced "Jim" with "João". Even though the names are roughly the translation of one another, it makes no sense whatsoever.

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  16. What about a dizzy tab? I have that!

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  17. This was curious to read! I see this tab every single day, so it was quite interesting for me to find out the meaning and the origin of the phrase.

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  18. My "He's dead Jim" page has the "tab" with swirly eyes and a tongue sticking out.

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