Amusing Easter Eggs on Your Computer

Easter eggs are amusing features or displays in an application, left behind by the developers for users to find. They are sometimes as simple as a funny message, or as elaborate as an entire flight simulator game, such as could be played way back in Excel ’97.

Here are some of my favorite recent Easter Eggs in common software.

Windows XP

Candy Cane Pipes: Turns 3D Pipes into candy canes

1. Right click desktop, click Properties, click Screen Saver tab
2. In the Screen saver pull-down menu, select 3D Pipes, and click Settings
3. In the Surface Style category, turn on Textured, and click Choose Texture button
4. When the Choose Texture window comes up, Click cancel, and the Pipes should now be candy canes.

Pinball game:  How to cheat

1. Open the Pinball game.
2. Type: “hidden test”
3. Right click the ball.
4. Now left click and hold, and you should be able to move the ball with your mouse.

Notepad: Anti-Bush? Strange and pointless… I’m not sure if this is intentional. Anyway.

1. Open Notepad
2. Type “bush hid the facts”
3. Save as anything.
4. Close and reopen the file, and help yourself to some rectangle text symbols.

Mozilla Firefox

Try Typing these in the Address Bar:

[About Mozilla]: a verse from The Book of Mozilla
[chrome://browser/content/browser.xul]: A browser within a browser. Very strange.
[About robots]: A message to humans from robots.
[About:kitchensink] An interactive symbol-based kitchen sink. It actually didn’t work for me, but it can also be viewed here: Kitchen Sink.

Adobe CS4

Photoshop: Stonehenge developer page
1. Open Photoshop CS4.
2. Press and hold CTRL key.
3. Click Help, and About PhotoShop. A Stonehenge style developer page should appear.

AfterEffects: Periodic Table of Developers
1. Open AfterEffects CS4.
2. Press and hold ALT key.
3. Click help, About AfterEffects.

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