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You might think programmers are an anonymous lot isolated from the outside world. But they're nothing if not clever. Many of them have found a way to communicate using Easter Eggs.
Easter Eggs are messages hidden in an application. If you know the secret keytrokes and mouse actions that activate the egg, you can see the programmer's communiqué. Not every application has an egg, but many popular ones do. Here's a list of eggs and how to activate them:
1. Select User Setup from the Tools menu.
2. Change the Initials to "GPB" (all caps)
3. Select About Ami Pro from the Help menu.
4. Press and hold down the Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys.
5. Without releasing the keys, press the function key which corresponds to the day of the week (F1 = Sunday, F2 = Monday and so on).
6. Still without releasing the Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys, type SHANK.
This produces a screenfull of "flying heads"--black & white photographs of the members of the Ami Pro 3.01 development team. There's one additional identified flying object, a purple donut. Try moving your mouse pointer around the screen. You'll discover the flying programmers will bounce off your pointer in wildly unpredictable ways.
Select About CorelDRAW! from the Help menu.
Double-click the Corel balloon in the upper-left corner of the About dialog.
Launch Excel, close any open workbooks.
Select File/New
Maximize Excel's main window, then maximize the workbook's window.
Right-click on background of any toolbar.
Select Customize...
Select Custom from Categories listbox.
Drag Card deck icon onto workbook.
When the Assign Macro dialog appears, click Cancel.
Click Close to dismiss the Customize dialog.
Shift+Ctrl+Left-click the card deck toolbar button.
Type T3! in a blank document with NORMAL template.
Highlight the text and click on the Bold toolbar button.
Select AutoFormat from the Format menu.
Click on the OK button on the AutoFormat dialog.
Click on the Accept button (Accept all changes).
Select About from the Help menu.
Click on WinWord icon in top-left corner.
This popular World Wide Web browser has several "egglets." Some simply perform useful, though undocumented, functions. Others are just for fun!
Press Ctrl+Alt+F to see Netscape's famous FishCam--nearly live images of an office aquarium.
Getting bored during those long downloads? Press Ctrl+Alt+T to display the Transfer Status window.
Learn at the feet of Mozilla, Netscape's Barney-esque mascot. In Netscape's Location box (where you'd normally type a URL), enter "about:mozilla". You'll be treated to a randomly selected page from the Book of Mozilla. The animated icon in the upper-right corner of Netscape's main window may also change, depending on your version of Netscape.
Meet Netscape's developers! Type "about:email" in Netscape's Location box, replacing the word e-mail with the e-mail name of your favorite Netscape employee. Choose from marca, rodb, ebina, blythe, tborja, jules, jim, tdicker, sdowns, cat, mfaul, snpf, bfitler, bgolden, hecker, hagan, kipp, mhiggins, chouck, sharoni, hkamat, ammiel, karlton, billk, brian, bkim, topher, ari, bjm, marcm, dmay, timm, mlm, robm, montulli, dmose, paquin, mareva, nathan, hbscharp, lisa, kent, pthomsen, atotic, mtoy, jeff, jsw, terry, kyounger, and jwz!
Run one of the Windows-based components (such as Disk Doctor).
Select About from the Help menu.
Simultaneously hold down the keys N, U and 8.
Use the mouse to point to the picture of your favorite development team member.
Activate Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock.
Click the right mouse button.
After step 3, you'll see nifty color photograph of the NU v8.0 development team. Using the mouse to point to each team member causes their name to be displayed. Step 4 causes the phrase "NEVER SAY DIE!" to appear, and the team members don hockey masks (hint: the pre-release code name for Norton Utilities v8.0 was "Jason")!
Select About Program Manager from Program Manager's Help menu.
While holding down Shift+Ctrl, double-click on the "flying Windows" logo in the upper-left corner of the About dialog.
Click on the About dialog's OK button.
Repeat steps 1 through 3.
Repeat steps 1 through 3.
After completing step 4 you'll see a small Easter Egg. It's a fluttering flag beside the message "Dedicated to all the hard-working people on the Microsoft Windows 3.10 Team!" After completing step 5 you'll see a scrolling list of all the folks who working on Windows 3.1x.
There are four different pictures that can appear beside the credits in step 5. Each time you activate the Easter Egg, a different person is selected at random. See if you can "collect" all four (Bill Gates, Brad Silverberg, Steve Ballmer and The Bear)! Another surprise: you can activate this egg from any of the standard Windows applets, including File Manager.
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