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List of Microsoft codenames

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Microsoft codenames are the codenames given by Microsoft to products it has in development, before these products are given the names by which they appear on store shelves. Many of these products (new versions of Windows in particular) are of major significance to the IT community, and so the terms are often widely used in discussions prior to the official release. Microsoft usually does not announce a final name until shortly before the product is publicly available.

Codename Preliminary name Final name Notes

Early Windows versions

Janus Windows 3.1
Kato Windows for Workgroups
Snowball (LB) Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Chicago Windows 95
Frosting Windows 95 PlusPack
Detroit Windows 95 OSR 2
Nashville Windows 96 Internet Explorer, for Windows 95
Memphis Windows 98 The codename was the key to activating an easter egg in Windows 98:
  • open the "Date and Time" control panel;
  • go to the "Timezone" page;
  • hold the Control key and drag a line with the mouse cursor from Memphis, Egypt (or maybe Cairo, codename of Windows NT 4 - the map is too small to tell) to Memphis, Tennessee. Still holding the Control key, drag another line from Memphis to Redmond, Washington;
  • a window opens with the credits for Windows 98.

Windows NT family

OS/2 3.0 Windows NT Windows NT 3.1 There never was a Windows NT 1.0. The version number was chosen to mirror the Windows version number at the time, and to appear to have a higher version number than OS/2.
Daytona Windows NT 3.5
Cairo, SUR (Shell Update Release) Windows NT 4.0 Some of the original goals of Cairo were never achieved - such as an object file system, itself known as Cairo. Microsoft originally planned for NT 4.0 to be just a simple "Shell Update Release" to integrate the Windows 95 GUI with Windows NT 3.51's kernel.
Wolfpack Cluster Server
Hydra Terminal Services Terminal Server Terminal Server adds "multiheading" support to Windows (the ability to run multiple instances of the graphics subsystem), and the hydra is a mythological monster with multiple heads.
Impala, "Windows for Toasters" Windows NT 4.0 Embedded
Windows NT 5.0 Windows 2000 A watershed in Windows naming:
  • first major Windows release since Windows 2.0 without a codename;
  • first major Windows NT release whose workstation variant was named "Professional" instead of "Workstation";
  • first major Windows NT release without the "NT" designation in the trade name, which caused confusion when Windows ME was released. The original Windows line has since been dropped altogether, and Windows NT operating systems are now simply referred to as "Windows".
Asteroid Windows 2000 Service Pack 1
Janus Windows 2000 64-bit Same codename as Windows 3.1.
Odyssey N/A Never released. Also never compiled.
Neptune N/A A "Consumer" version based on the Windows 2000 codebase. Never released (became Whistler).
Whistler Windows XP Merge of initial Whistler (i.e. build 2202), Neptune and Project Odyssey. Named after Whistler, British Columbia, where design retreats were held.
Mantis Windows XP Embedded
Freestyle Windows XP Media Center Edition 1.0
Harmony Windows XP Media Center Edition 1.5 Name of a ski lift and alpine bowl in Whistler, British Columbia
Symphony Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Name of an alpine bowl in Whistler, British Columbia
Springboard Windows XP Service Pack 2 Name of a ski run on Blackcomb in Whistler, British Columbia
Lone Star Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 A branch of the Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 codebase, featuring enhancements specifically for Tablet PC hardware.
Whistler Server Windows .NET Server Windows Server 2003 One of many unrelated Microsoft projects of the time to carry a ".NET" designation. See: Microsoft .NET.
Bobcat Windows Small Business Server 2003 Bobcat is a ski-run on Whistler Mountain.
Longhorn Windows Vista In stage Beta 2 (as of April 2006). Named after the Longhorn Bar in the Whistler-Blackcomb resort; initially planned as an "interim release" between "Whistler" and "Blackcomb" (now "Vienna").
Cougar Windows Small Business Server "Longhorn" In development. Cougar is a ski-run on Whistler Mountain.
Longhorn Server Windows Server "Longhorn" In development. Planned server edition of Vista to be released in 2007.
Centro In development. Planned "mid-size" (25-500 PC) edition of Longhorn Server.[1]
Fiji Vista R2? Not started. Planned successor to Vista.[2] Fiji is an island nation in the south Pacific Ocean.
Blackcomb, Vienna Not started. Originally codenamed "Blackcomb" after the Whistler-Blackcomb resort. Renamed to "Vienna" in January 2006.

Windows CE family

Pegasus Windows CE 1.0
Mercury, Apollo Windows CE 2.0
Birch, Gryphon Windows CE 2.1
Wyvern, Jupiter, Orion, Hermes, Goldeneye Windows CE 2.11
Cedar, Galileo, Rapier, Merlin, Stinger Windows CE 3.0
Talisker, Jameson, McKendric Windows CE 4.0
Ozone Windows Mobile 2003
Magneto Windows Mobile 5.0 Windows Mobile 5.0 was officially announced at Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference 2005 in Las Vegas, May 9-12 2005.
Crossbow Windows Mobile 5.0 Second Edition Update to Mobile 5.0, expected in Q4 2006.
Photon Windows Mobile 6.0 Major update to the platform, merging Smartphone and Pocket PC. Expected in Q4 2007. [3]

DirectX family

Quartz ActiveMovie DirectShow The implementation is still contained in a DLL called quartz.dll. DirectShow and Windows Media Player first appeared as ActiveMovie and ActiveMovie Player as optional components in Windows 98.
ActiveMovie Player Windows Media Player ActiveMovie was the old name of DirectShow.
Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF) DirectX 10

Visual Studio family

Thunder Visual Basic 1.0 The standard dialogs and controls created by the Visual Basic runtime library all have "Thunder" as a prefix of their internal type names (for example, buttons are internally known as ThunderCommandButton).
Everett Visual Studio .NET 2003 After Everett, a town near Seattle.
Whidbey Visual Studio 2005 After Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. A little farther from Seattle than Everett.
Orcas Visual Studio 2007 Named after Orcas Island, located in Puget Sound. Farther still from Seattle.
Hawaii Next version of Visual Studio after Orcas. Named after Hawaii Island.
Burton Visual Studio Team System
Hatteras Visual Studio Team System's Source Control System
Whitehorse Visual Studio Team System's designers for architects. Includes Application Designer, Logical Data Center Designer, System Designer, and Deployment Designer.
Ocracoke Visual Studio Team System load testing suite Named after Ocracoke Island.
Fidalgo Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX
Tuscany Online version of Visual Studio. Currently a research project.[4]

Experimental operating systems

Singularity Experimental operating system based on the Microsoft .NET platform, using software-based type safety as a replacement for hardware-based memory protection. Project homepage.
Bigtop Experimental grid computing operating system, loosely related to Singularity. Sources: 1, 2

Others

COOL, Lightning, Project 42 Next Generation Windows Services Microsoft .NET v1.0 The team was based in building 42, hence Project 42. "Next Generation Windows Services" appeared in the earliest press releases about the upcoming platform (example)
COM+ 2.0 Runtime (COR), Universal Runtime (URT) Microsoft .NET Framework v1.0 The name COM+ is still in use to designate extensions to COM (currently at version 1.5) for resource management, integrated security and transactionality. .NET itself has little in common with COM and COM+.
Darwin Microsoft Installer Windows Installer
Godot Microsoft Layer for Unicode Named after the play Waiting for Godot (centered around the failure of a man named "Godot" to appear and the endless wait for him), because it was felt to be long overdue (source).
Acrylic Expression Graphic Designer (EGD) Microsoft's New Image Editing program based on its acquired Expression.
Sparkle Expression Interactive Designer (EID) User interface design tool for Windows Presentation Foundation. Meant to be used by graphics artists.
Cider Visual Studio designer for building Windows Presentation Foundation applications. Meant to be used by application developers.
Quartz Expression Web Designer (EWD)
Yukon SQL Server 2005
Avalon Windows Presentation Foundation
Indigo Windows Communication Foundation
Monad MSH, Microsoft Shell Windows PowerShell Monads, according to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, are the ultimate elements of the universe, individual percepient beings, and MSH is similarly composed of small, individual modules the user puts in interrelation.
Platinum Exchange Server 2000
Titanium Exchange Server 2003
Vienna Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 Vienna is now the codename of the version of Windows formerly codenamed Blackcomb.
Budapest Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2005
Istanbul Microsoft Office Communicator 2005
Kahuna Windows Live Mail
Metro XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Atlas Ajax implementation in .NET An implementation for ASP.NET of Ajax native to the .NET Framework 2.0.
LINQ Language integrated query Language extensions to expose query syntax natively to languages such as Visual Basic .NET and c#
Concur Aims to: define higher-level abstractions (above "threads and locks"); for today’s imperative languages; that evenly support the range of concurrency granularities; to let developers write correct and efficient concurrent applications; with lots of latent parallelism; that can be efficiently mapped to the user’s.

References

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