Alex Hyett

Easter Eggs in Software

I remember the first website I made, I included a little invisible hyperlink in the bottom corner of the website that led to a secret page.

I have always loved finding these so-called "Easter Eggs" in software. It is a nice reminder to try and include a bit of joy into everything you do.

I believe the first "Easter Egg" in software came from the video game "Adventure" on the Atari. If you have ever seen the film "Ready Player One" you will know what I am talking about. Game designers were never given any credit for the games they created for the fear they would start asking for royalties. To overcome this the creator of adventure "Warren Robinett" added a hidden room to the game that credits him as the creator.

The first Easter Egg I remember seeing myself was in Microsoft Excel 97. These were the steps needed to find this secret:

1. Open Excel
2. Open a new workbook
3. Press F5
4. Enter L97:X97
5. Press Enter
6. Press Tab` once
7. Hold Ctrl-Shift while you click on the Chart Wizard icon in the toolbar.

You then would be presented with what I can only describe as a weird alien world with purple ground and a black sky which you could fly round. If you flew round long enough you would soon find a grey section that had the names of the creators on it in true Adventure style.

As it is Easter Sunday I thought I would share some other Easter Eggs that are a bit more accessible than trying to get Microsoft Excel 97 up and running.

Google Chrome Dinosaur Game #

This one is fairly well known. If you load up Google Chrome when you don't have an internet connection you will be presented with this:

Google Chrome no internet dinosaur

The magic happens when you press space the dinosaur jumps, and it loads a game where you have to jump over cacti:

Google Chrome no internet dinosaur game

Google Search Easter Eggs #

I am not sure if it is due to Google's famous 20% project that let developers work on anything they think will benefit Google, but there are tons of Easter Eggs in Google search.

Here are some search queries to try (most of these are desktop only)

There are absolutely loads of these, but these are my favourites.

Pride in Google Sheets #

Even more Google Easter eggs. Open up a new Google Sheet and type PRIDE with a letter in each column. This loads up a rainbow as the background colours of the columns.

The Book of Mozilla #

In Firefox go to about:mozilla to see a red page with:

The Beast continued its studies with renewed Focus, building great Reference works and contemplating new Realities. The Beast brought forth its followers and acolytes to create a renewed smaller form of itself and, through Mischievous means, sent it out across the world.

from The Book of Mozilla, 6:27

Welcome Humans! #

Still in Firefox go to about:robots for a message from our overlords.

Do you have any favourites? #

There are so many hidden Easter Eggs in software it would be impossible to list and test them all. Let me know if you have any favourites, or even better have added in some Easter Eggs of your own in the code you have been working on.

❤️ Picks of the Week #

👾 Game - Oxygen Not Included - I only discovered this game recently as it was on sale on Steam. I am mildly obsessed with this game at the moment. It has just the right level of complexity to have me lose lots of hours down a nerdy rabbit hole.

🛠 Tool - GitHub - divriots/jampack: Optimizes static websites for best user experience and best Core Web Vitals scores. - I am having fun redesigning my website at the moment. One of my main concerns is making it as performant as possible. I am definitely going to be using this as part of my eleventy build.

🧩 ? - Life Universe - I am not quite sure how to categorise this. If you searched "Conway’s Game of Life" earlier you will know what this is about. It is also infinitely zoomable.

🛠 Tool - DOOM Captcha - Captchas don't have to be boring - Someone needs to make this the default captcha for websites!

🛠 Tool - Advertising share intents with microformats - Sharing stuff on social platforms is getting harder now they are all decentralised. This looks like it could be useful and I may use it on my new site.

💬 Quote of the Week #

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says "I'm possible".

  • Audrey Hepburn
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