The official name is Cesium. However given cesiumjs.org and @CesiumJS, many users have started calling it CesiumJS.
CesiumJS is more descriptive, i.e., it is clearly a JavaScript library, and is much easier to Google.
We are thinking about a rebrand from Cesium to CesiumJS. This wouldn’t affect the code; really, it would just tweak the logo and wording on the website.
What do you think? Is it a good idea?
Thanks,
Patrick
i prefer cesium as a brand. Becuse cesiumjs is difficult to spell for end-user.
Imho, name “Cesium” is too common for web search. For example try to search for “cesium based application”, “cesium tutorials” or something like this. It generally gives nuclear results. I met similar situiations when tried to find more special, technical things related to your engine - too many “noise”. As result, search is less productive, less reliable, takes more efforts. “CesiumJS” is much better in this sense.
Let me ask: why the engine was named “Cesium”?
Alexei
Initially I had the same search experience as plotnik. I’m now in the habit of searching for cesiumjs “whatever”. That said, CesiumJS is a bit awkward sounding – but it wouldn’t change my respect for the product.
Googling Cesium yields these top 6 results:
3 refer to Cesium the Virtual Globe
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/cesium-dev
3 refer to the radioactive soft metal element
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele055.html
cesiumjs results in nothing but the Cesium Virtual Globe, so that’s probably good for at least the short term.
However neither indicates what it is, for people who never heard of it before. Google Earth indicates it has to do with the Earth, and Google Search is already known for finding information. So people would think its about finding information about the Earth. Although you can also use it to explore the Moon, Mars, and the Stars.
Long term perhaps a name that gives a good idea of what it is could be pursued. Although I can’t think of any good ideas at the moment. Perhaps keep the Cesium prefix and add a suffix. Such as Cesium Explorer, Cesium Navigator, Cesium Earth, Cesium Planet (not just Earth.)
The Cesium name came about because the element Cesium is used in the atomic clock and time accuracy is very important to us.
Interesting. That explains the clock controls and indicators that comes standard with the Cesium Viewer, before a compass indicator.
It appears that Cesium defines the standard unit of time: the second.
“Atomic clocks show that a modern day is longer by about 1.7 milliseconds than a century ago, slowly increasing the rate at which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds.”
To maintain the 246060=86400 second day a leap second is added every few years.
Apparently 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds is the true Earth revolution time. 24hours is Sun relative, due to by the fact that after a revolution the Earth orbited a small amount around the Sun causing it to have to spin more than 360deg to put the Sun in the same spot in the sky.
I think people are just saying cesiumjs right now because its hyped way of naming these days.
My 2 cent would be, keep cesium. Reason for adding js to a brand name should only be becuase the brand is already taken. Alot of those js libs that are clones of something thats already been made elsewhere it makes sense to add the js to the brand.
Cesium is awesome in itself, there is nothing else like it, so no reason to add a js to the brand.
+1 for CesiumJS just it sounds better and to avoid name collision with the
chemical [1].
[1]
Thanks for the feedback. We’re not going to rebrand in the short-term (we’re just a tad busy developing at the moment, lol), but we’ll refer to the ideas here if/when we consider it later so more feedback is welcome.
Patrick
+1 for CesiumJS because of simple Google-ability.
If I want to google for the radioactive element, I don’t really want results for a 3d webgl globe. Similarly, if wanted to google for the 3d webgl globe, I don’t want results about the radioactive element.
I like Cesium better, CesiumJS is more google-able, but if you consider all the other libraries out there that have “JS” in the suffix, Cesium stands out a lot more and makes it all that much more unique. At its current state, it is very easy to find. Let users call it CesiumJS for googleability, but preserve the name as Cesium.
I vote to stick with Cesium.
I think CesiumJS or cesium.js is the way to go, all the major JavaScript frameworks/libraries have JS in their brand name (eg. node.js, AngularJS, backbone.js and so on).
Being more Google friendly is always positive because it will attract more users and developers. To be honest I don’t see any drawbacks in re-branding so it sounds like a good idea!
sexta-feira, 30 de Janeiro de 2015 às 10:56:42 UTC, Patrick Cozzi escreveu:
Thanks for the feedback. We're not going to rebrand in the short-term (we're just a tad busy developing at the moment, lol), but we'll refer to the ideas here if/when we consider it later so more feedback is welcome.
While the name Cesium may have its issues, I don't believe the 'JS' (and '.js') suffix trend has much basis. Changing the name to facilitate searches in Google is a bit misguided, IMO.
I agree with Hyper Sonic's line of reasoning:
Long term perhaps a name that gives a good idea of what it is could be pursued. Although I can't think of any good ideas at the moment. Perhaps keep the Cesium prefix and add a suffix. Such as Cesium Explorer, Cesium Navigator, Cesium Earth, Cesium Planet (not just Earth.)
Further, I definitely think you need to keep the Cesium reference as it stems from core (and distinct) design philosophy as Tom Fili notes:
You definitely need to change it. Ambiguity is bad.
It’s been two years since we’ve had this discussion, and even though a lot has changed, it’s still very relevant! We are currently in the process of finalizing specific names for different part of the Cesium ecosystem, and specifically the open source library. Thanks for the feedback, we’ll definitely take it all into account.