14 DAY TRIAL // Right... The past week, in case you've missed it, Microsoft unveiled the Windows Presentation Foundation Live Rich Client ActiveX Player R2 Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 CTP. Well, not actually. You see, it ended up as Microsoft Silverlight, the former Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, but it did come close to being called Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation Live Rich Client ActiveX Player R2 Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 CTP.
Tim Sneath, Windows Vista Technical Evangelist, has a great post on how Microsoft has come up with the name for Silverlight. "I'm sure some readers will be interested in the decision making process that we went through to arrive at the name of Silverlight for our new web runtime platform. It was a tough choice; we know that WPF/E was much loved by the community and that acronyms can be both inspiring and evocative, but we really wanted to try something radical and different. We had some really great alternative choices that we considered before settling on Silverlight," Sneath revealed.
Well, Silverlight is actually a pretty decent name for WPF/E, but when you see the alternatives, you can't help thinking that Microsoft could have done a better job. Here are the name variants also considered by Microsoft as presented by Tim Sneath. My personal favorite is number 1, WPFLRCAPR2UESP1CTP for short:
10. GrayLuminosity (close, but there was just something not quite right about it) 9. AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript And XAML (turns out that acronym was already taken) 8. David (Bill Gates vetoed that one himself) 7. non-Windows Presentation Foundation 6. Windows Technology Foundation (usually shortened to WTF, of course) 5. MicroMedia Player (a lightweight web alternative to Media Player) 4. Microsoft Light New User Experience (shortened to LINUX) 3. Microsoft 2.0 (big 800lb gorilla? Us? No, we're your friendly neighborhood Web 2.0 startup) 2. Redlight ("Roxanne? ? ?you don't have to wear that dress tonight?") 1. Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation Live Rich Client ActiveX Player R2 Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 CTP (or WPFLRCAPR2UESP1CTP for short)