Chris Peters: Web Developer

WHAT editor?

Filed under: Marketing & Strategy, Usability — Chris Peters, November 28, 2005

::BLEEP:: Editor: the text editor for InternetAs I am about to finish a project at work, there is one small issue I am sweating about a little. My project uses the FCKEditor WYSIWYG editor. It’s a fabulous product. And it’s open source. But why the name?

I know that FCK stands for Frederico Caldeira Knabben, creator of the product. But couldn’t he have set his ego aside and named it something else? How about FUNeditor? AWESOMEditor? But no. Now we have the three-letter version of everyone’s favorite four-letter word in the product’s title.

I think you should consider it a user experience issue if the user consciously thinks of the f-bomb every time they use your product. I’m seriously about to go into the source and replace every human-visible instance of “fckeditor” (and there are tons) with something else.

2 Comments »

  1. Would you have preferred his name to be Alonso Santos Sanchez? Or maybe Cesario Urbano Naldo Torres (some people have two middle names, you know?)

    Sorry, couldn’t resist, LOL! I do like the modified logo though! :-)

    Comment by Mike Schinkel — June 15, 2008 @ 1:57 am

  2. Thanks. Developers like Frederico are very smart people, but sometimes they just miss those ever-important details. :)

    Comment by Chris Peters — June 15, 2008 @ 7:49 am

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