Flex and Flash Player Codenames (better late then never)

Posted on June 15, 2006 | 7 comments

(updated 2006.06.16 thanks to Mark)

I just finally put all the recent codenames together. I have known of Zorn since Flex Builder 2 was first talked about. But I did not know that Flash Player 9 (and previously 8.5 betas) is called Zaphod. And the next version of Flex (Flex 2) is called Mistral.

So we have:
Zorn – Flex Builder 2
Mistral – Flex 2
Zaphod – Flash Player 9
Blaze – Flash 9

Check out what the wikipedia thinks they are:
Zorn – After John Zorn the musician. ( not the first entry of “A last name or a river France”).

Mistral – An atmospheric phenomenon that causes a strong northwesterly wind along the coast, in southern France.

Zaphod – is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Blaze – alot to choose from here.

The France things is out. Two of them have something to do with France? This is just for fun so to look into meanings to seriously. Ok, enough about all these codenames lets see the real products hit the shelves.

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  • http://www.sharonandadam.com AmG

    Mike Chambers confirmed earlier in a comment that Zorn is actually a reference to the musician John Zorn, one of the “last names” entries in Wikipedia: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mesh/archives/2005/06/macromedia_ecli.html

    Minus 1 point for France. ;)

  • http://www.renaun.com Renaun Erickson

    Thanks for the info, John Zorn it is!

  • Pavel Simek

    Zaphod Beeblebrox has two heads, as far as I can remember… does it mean AVM1 and AVM2? :)

  • http://www.renaun.com Renaun Erickson

    Good point about the 2 heads. I was kind of thinking something similiar as it is a big departure from the old flash player and on to the new. A dual ego too? The charactor Zaphod in the movie is quite weird at best.

  • Jens

    Zorn could be the Swedish painter?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Zorn

  • http://www.andersblog.com Mark Anders

    Zaphod was indeed picked because of the “2 heads” of the character reflecting the 2 VM’s that can control Player 9. I also seem to remember that the name was chosen around the time that the movie came out, which all the teams went to, so it was a current topic. Finally, you listed the codenames as ZZM. Internally, we always ordered it ZMZ and in fact had tee shirts made up with that acronym.

  • http://www.renaun.com Renaun Erickson

    Mark that is a little bit of information that makes developing all the more fun. Now I have a story to tell when people ask about the new Flash Player 9.

    And last, where can I get a ZMZ t-shirt?