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?
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.
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.
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..
It happens, yes. But it might be because of the specificities of my first language (french). I don't think I would abbreviate it when speaking english though. My mistake, I should have taken that into account.
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.)
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!
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".)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I went to college at Binghamton in upstate New York in the 90s when I first heard it said. And the mantra was "choosy developers choose GIF" based off the catchy "choosy moms choose JIF" (peanut butter) advertisements that were popular here in the US at the time. And it was just 'developers' not designers at the time since the web was so new and people talked about as web development, not design. I never heard it with a hard G until years later, mostly from younger web designers.
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".
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX
(I don't remember an abbreviation using the first and last letters, though)
(Edit: "different to" sounded wrong. I could never remember which way that goes.)
Or is "preferred" a "preferred" word, but "correct" is allowable?
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".)
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.
This is why I long to own a t-shirt bearing the words "Practising Peddant".
sigh
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.