this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Kind of a click-baity title; I apologize.

For some while now I've been seeing the abbreviation of Firefox slowly mutate from Fx/fx to FF.

From the release notes:

How do I spell Firefox? How do I abbreviate it?

Firefox is spelled F-i-r-e-f-o-x - only the first letter capitalized (i.e. not FireFox, not Foxfire, FoxFire or whatever else a number of folk seem to think it to be called.) The preferred abbreviation is "Fx" or "fx".

I mean, it makes total sense to abbreviate Firefox with two capital Fs, and the documentation does say "preferred abbreviation," but I just wanted to make those of you who didn't know about this aware...aware of the fact that you're abbreviating Fx wrong, God dammit!

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fx? Function? Effects?

It's such an ambiguous abbreviation that I don't expect people to use it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In medical abbreviations, Fx is fracture

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely no one is using "Fx" or "fx", especially since it would be easily confused with "special effects". Intended or not, FF is the common one and everyone knows it as that too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

FFX is the okayest of all FF

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fx? Would have never guessed. If I start using that, people probably won't know what I'm talking about.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, exactly, I'll use what lets people understand me

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Yeah I will use what people recognize rather than the thing the org did not bother to utilize early and often enough to be recognized by most.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

FF may not be what Mozilla invented or preferred, but it has over time become the de facto abbreviation.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

People will understand if I refer to FF in a context where we're talking about browsers. They will not understand "Fx". It'd rather be understood than """correct""".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

neat bit of info. I'll still continue using ff and pronouncing gif as gif

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You monster! It's clearly "gif".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They just let anyone on the internet nowadays. It’s GIF, not GIF. Get it right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Get it right or Get It Fight

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Huh. I…don’t know if this is a good abbreviation. FF makes the most sense? Fx seems weird, I’ll be honest. I’ll try though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

That video game where you aren't alive?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I feel like I wasted 60 seconds... now 120 seconds of my life reading and typing up this reply.

Who is abbreviating Firefox? Who capitalizes FireFox this way, and why would it really matter to anyone.

And who made the decision to abbreviate it Fx... that's a horrible decision.

JavaFx is what first comes to mind to me, but it's such a common abbreviation, as others have pointed out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sorry for wasting your time, bro

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Nothing of the sort on your behalf. I learned something, just it seems so dumb that before the Spread Firefox campaign in the early 2000's, they put so much thought into such an abbreviation. It must have been an internal thing, that the regular populace never really adopted.

Speaking of... apparently the Spread Firefox campaign was often abbreviated SFX... makes sense based on the context provided from your post, but I would never in a million years associate SFX with that... I'd think "Sound Effects" or something.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I avoid the issue of how to abbreviate Firefox by just using Internet Explorer, IE.

Easy peasy. 🤙

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Like the time when a kid in school tried to create their own nickname and everyone noped the fuck out and carried on calling them the same thing they were.

You don't get to pick your nickname, even if you started trying 20 years ago, FF.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Oh

Actually a good post, I never knew that lmfao

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

love this post 🫡 be pedantic and hold onto the old ways.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Time to piss off both camps an start calling it f5x.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I've used FF since the first versions. It makes sense since the name is a combo of two words that start with F. I get that technically the second should be lowercase, but that looks weird. I missed Mozilla's memo on the preferred version back then...

I think with a lot of things like grammar police and such, usually if the context makes it clear what's being talked about and there's no confusion, it doesn't matter that much for informal discussion. I do admit if someone said "Fx" while talking about browser stuff, before now it would have taken a second to realize what they meant. Shows I've never seen it before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

but it's ffx... obviously.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I didn't realize we were abbreviating it, but I think we should stop because it's dumb. Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

I’ve been using FXX