Easter Eggs serve as in-jokes in almost all products these days. From Video Games to Word Processing Software, from DVDs to Printers and from Oscilloscopes to Image Editing applications. Easter Eggs are always fascinating and stumbling upon them is always something unique.
For those who do not know about Easter eggs; they serve as kind of hidden messages and jokes from the developers and programmers. Unlike video game cheat codes, they are not leaked intentionally and some have been reported to not being discovered for decades.
Here are the Top 10 best Easter eggs in software applications, in no particular order (I have omitted the Windows Solitaire forced win because everybody knows that).
1. Mac OS X – Lord of the Rings and This Day in History
In Mac OS X, there are numerous Easter eggs and the best of them all are the Lord of the Rings timeline and another is the important events on this day calendar.
To access the LOTR egg :
Goto Applications –> Utilities –> Open Terminal. Type in “grep LOTR /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history” (without the quotes)
To access the This Day in History egg, type in this in Terminal ”cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history”
2. Hall of Tortured Souls – Excel 95
- Create a new worksheet
- Select the 95th Row and then Tab to Column B
- Goto Help –> About
- Hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift and select “Tech Support“
- The “Hall of Tortured Souls” opens up
- The wall at the end of the hall has the programmer’s names.
- Do a U-turn and type “excelkfa” and then you’ll be able to cross the wall and see their pictures as well
3. Adobe Photoshop Hidden “About” – Red Pill, Cat & Stonehenge
In almost all versions of Photoshop, there is a hidden about screen. Hold down the “Ctrl” key and goto Help –> About Photoshop. The hidden about screen in CS3 and CS4.
There is also a hidden cat in the red pill. Zoomed in and clearer version :
4. The utorrent Tetris
5. The Book of Mozilla
6. The Google Earth Flight Simulator
Google Earth has a built in Flight Simulator which lets you fly either a F-16 or a SR22 (not the SR71) from any airport of your choice. Make sure you have Google Earth 4.2 or newer. In the application, click on the globe and enter Ctrl + Shift + A or Tools –> Flight Simulator (this option came in later versions. In earlier versions, it remained an easter egg).
Google has now provided a guide to using the simulator alongwith the controls. Follow this link.
7. Picasa Teddy Bear
8. MS-Paint Hidden Feature
Microsoft Paint has many Easter eggs. Some of the most famous are :
- Scuff creates a dragged 3D effect. To scuff, select part of the image and hold shift while dragging it.
- Stamp creates copies. To stamp, select part of the image and hold ctrl while dragging it.
- Brush Pressure is also available as an Easter egg. To use brush pressure, hold ctrl and press - or + on the keypad while drawing, spraying, or using a shape tool.
- Also we can draw straight lines with ease. To draw straight or diagonal lines with the pencil, hold Shift and move the mouse in that direction.
Scuff, Stamp and Paint Brush shown
9. AUTOCAD 2000 – Development Team
Almost all big software applications have credits for their development teams hidden inside the applications. In AUTOCAD 2000 :
- Select “Dimension style” from the Dimension toolbar, or go to Dimension –> Style.
- Hold down Ctrl+ Shift
- Click on the Preview graphic area of the manager box.
- A movie will pop up in a new window with a large “T”
- Select play from the menu and you will see a 3D movie with a picture of the Team members.
10. Honourable Mentions
Not everybody could make it to the top 10, but some deserve due credit for their ingenuity and their jokes
Excel 97 – Flight Simulator
- Create a new blank document
- Press F5
- Type in X97:L97 and press ENTER
- Press TAB to switch to the cell M97
- Click on the chart wizard button while holding down Control and Shift keys
- Use mouse to fly around – Right button forward/ Left button reverse
Word 97 – Pinball
- Create a new document
- Type “Blue” - with a capital B
- Select word and choose Font Style as Bold and set the color to Blue
- Type ” ” (space) after word “Blue”
- Go to Help -> About
- Hold down Ctrl + Shift and then left click the Word icon and voila Pinball !
- Use Z for left flipper, M for right flipper, and ESC to exit
Credits in Windows 95 and Windows 98
In Windows 95, right Click on the Desktop.
- Select New… then Folder to create a new folder.
- Name the folder “and now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for”
- Then right Click on the folder and rename it to “we proudly present for your viewing pleasure”.
- For the third time, rename it again to “The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!”
- Open the folder and the Windows 95 credits will be displayed
In Windows 98, go to C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\WELCOME
- Create a Shortcut for the file Weldata.exe by right clicking on the file and selecting “Create Shortcut”
- Right click on the shortcut and select “Properties”
- Add the following at the end of the target : “You_are_a_real_rascal”
- Now in the “Run” combobox select “Minimized”
- Click OK and double click the shortcut
We will return next week with the best Easter Eggs from Video Games. Also we will be informing you about Easter Eggs in your everyday appliances. Like almost all HP Printers have a hidden credits page with the names of all the developers and also the special menus on vending machines which enable you to increase the price of a soda can. So wait for our next great post.