The correct abbreviation for Firefox is ‘Fx’, not ‘FF’

http://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-US/firefox/releases/1.5.html#FAQ

by mathias • 12 years ago

39 55 12 years ago

website-archive.mozilla.org

Derpdiherp2• 12 years ago

I don't think there's many situations where you'd have to abbreviate Firefox anyway, it's not a large word to begin with. Internet Explorer as IE I can understand, it's large and compounding it is useful - but we don't abbreviate Opera or Chrome?

weavie• 12 years ago

All the browsers could be abbreviated to COFFIE. if it wasn't for IE we'd have a perfect acronym there. Darn IE messing things up again...

stuaxo• 12 years ago

Ethernet Explorer ?

icebraining• 12 years ago

Safari?

yati2• 12 years ago

The only places I've seen this abbreviation(and that too, mostly FF for Firefox, but FxOS for Firefox OS) is their IRC dev channels and/or mailing lists.

Derpdiherp2• 12 years ago

Ah I didn't think of the OS, that's a good point!

user24• 12 years ago

I've abbreviated Chrome to Ch (and Firefox to Fx).

bruceb• 12 years ago

FF is faster to type. I doubt most people who abbreviated it will change to Fx.

wazari972• 12 years ago

I think it's too late to expect any change, the webpage is from 2005, for FF 1.5 ;-)

bitJericho• 12 years ago

Ys, bcuz if its aster to type its best

sheraz• 12 years ago

I think they need to change their FAQ. I've never seen it abbreviated as Fx -- only as FF.

yati2• 12 years ago

Agreed FF is more popular than Fx, but Firefox OS is mostly abbreviated as FxOS[which IMO is much cooler than FFOS]

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

I do see it as Fx here and there.

lmm• 12 years ago

The link goes to an old FAQ in their website archive.

WorldWideWayne• 12 years ago

I have only ever see Fx being used to abbreviate the words "Effects" and "Framework". Never for Firefox. However, Wikipedia confirms that people do use it for Firefox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX

notduncansmith• 12 years ago

I wonder if they were inspired by Steve Wilhite (creator of the "jif").

robert_tweed• 12 years ago

It's definitely going in the same file as that and mebibytes.

abdias• 12 years ago

The FAQ says preferred not correct though. But it feels unnatural. Having media background FX for me at least means "effects" (as in special effects). Firefox may be written as a single word but there are two words in there and the natural way would be FF IMO. I have seen someone use Fx once and it confused the heck out of me... sorry Mozilla, I will use FF..

michaelmior• 12 years ago

They do say Fx and not FX which would appear different to me, although I'm sure many would assume Fx == FX.

johnchristopher2• 12 years ago

They do write Fx and not FX but I can't see how they would differentiate Fx from FX in a spoken conversation.

arcatek• 12 years ago

Depending on the context, FF can also mean Final Fantasy.

brazzy• 12 years ago

It can also mean a sexual practice. I'll leave it as an exercise for the kind reader to figure out which one.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

I think they should use then FFx

(I don't remember an abbreviation using the first and last letters, though)

rikkus2• 12 years ago

I use ffx, because unambiguity

edu• 12 years ago

Final Fantasy X?

rikkus2• 12 years ago

Argh!

davidgerard• 12 years ago

I'm sure they'll convince everyone in the world before the end of time.

CPLX• 12 years ago

In related news they would prefer we use FrskQet instead of FAQ

etfb3• 12 years ago

As another commenter here pointed out, it's preferred, not correct. This is the old prescriptivist vs descriptivist debate, as seen among linguists. (Disclaimer: I am not a linguist. I just read Language Log.) If you're fretting about the correct this and the proper that (prepositions at the end of sentences, "whom" instead of "who", and so on), you're a prescriptivist, and you may (note, I said may) be making up rules where no rules are needed. I prefer descriptivism (as in: "nauseous" now means the same thing as "nauseated", which is different from its old meaning of "nausea-making", because that's how it's used).

(Edit: "different to" sounded wrong. I could never remember which way that goes.)

thanatropism• 12 years ago

So, the correct nomenclature here is "preferred" rather than "correct"?

Or is "preferred" a "preferred" word, but "correct" is allowable?

dantheta• 12 years ago

As an aside to your edit, I have also seen "different than" used more and more often of late. I'm not sure if it is an Americanism that I was just unaware of. It's not that "different than" is wrong, it's just different from what I'm used to!

cokernel• 12 years ago

Yes, "different than" is an Americanism.

I believe that "different from" is most common across all dialects of English: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxdiffer.html (Note: This only compares UK English and American English, not "all dialects".)

etfb3• 12 years ago

In Year Eight at school, I had an English teacher who liked to mix things up a little. One time, I was answering a question in class, and I used "different to" or "different from" or something -- maybe even "different than", I don't remember now. The teacher told me to stand up, then explained that there was a right form and a wrong form for this, and got everyone to pick sides -- "than" here, "from" there and "to" over there. Then I bamboozled him, because I noticed that the smartest girl in the class, a gorgeous lass who gloried in the surname of Snodgrass, had picked a different side, so I reasoned that she was more likely right and defected to the same group. The teacher was deeply annoyed that I apparently didn't have the courage of my convictions; my point, which I understood instinctively even at that age, was that embarrassing a student to make a point was a totally shit way to educate people, and if he was going to place such a high premium on game playing in class, he could call me Kobayashi Maru.

To this day, I still can't remember which is correct - "than", "from" or "to". But I can remember the look on his face, and the fact that after that he stuck with slightly less aggravating teaching methods.

aninhumer• 12 years ago

For the most part, I don't think these kinds of issues are caused by disagreements in linguistic philosophy. Most people are taught language in a way which encourages them to think in a prescriptivist way, and they simply never learn about descriptivism.

etfb3• 12 years ago

And thence comes most of the really stupid arguments on Facebook that aren't about guns or Firefly.

This is why I long to own a t-shirt bearing the words "Practising Peddant".

izietto• 12 years ago

What about Fifx :)

mkesper• 12 years ago

What was the point of showing this here?

ozh• 12 years ago

The whole planet says "FF". This makes it de facto the correct/preferred/official abbr

mahdavi• 12 years ago

Searching "FX" on Google brings nothing related to Firefox, not a single link, but "FF" brings Firefox download page. Sorry but I'm going to stick with FF.

otikik• 12 years ago

Well, that page is wrong.

restlessdesign• 12 years ago

…and “GIF” is supposed to be pronounced “JIFF” …and “npm” doesn’t really stand for “Node Package Manager”

sigh

wlesieutre3• 12 years ago

From wikipedia:

Contrary to the belief of many, "npm" is not in fact an abbreviation for "Node Package Manager." It is a recursive bacronymic abbreviation for "npm is not an acronym." (If it was "ninaa", then it would be an acronym, and thus incorrectly named.)

So the author named it npm for node package manager, then wanted to sound clever so he said it doesn't stand for that? He could just as easily called it "aslkdjghasjklg" and said it's an abbreviated version of "aslkdjghasjklg is not an acronym. And that would still be dumb.

It's like inventing a device to produce collimated beams of light, and then naming it "laser" for "laser is not an acronym" when everyone knows what it actually means.

naturalethic• 12 years ago

Maybe you need to get your satire detector checked?

JohnTHaller2• 12 years ago

Everyone I've ever met pronounces it jif as in the peanut butter as that's what the creator intended and disseminated way back when.

wlesieutre3• 12 years ago

I've never met anyone who pronounces it that way; we all use a hard g like "graphics." I'm curious if this differs regionally like most pronunciations, or if it's spread in different patterns because it's mainly said online.

usingpond• 12 years ago

Ugh, shut up, nobody cares. Hey, maybe start taking care of your God-awful rendering engine and CPU cycles instead of wasting time on stuff like this?

peapicker• 12 years ago

Good luck with that, Mozilla.

digitalcreate• 12 years ago

I'm looking through their bug reports and developer message boards all of the time... and I've never seen anyone abbreviate it as anything other than "FF".

The correct abbreviation for Firefox is ‘Fx’, not ‘FF’

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