Easter Eggs

17 Dec 2003

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    Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 22:59:11 -0400
    From: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
    Subject: Re: Netscape "random" number seed generator code available

    In article <199509251159.EAA08528@mycroft.rand.org>, jim@acm.org (Jim
    Gillogly) wrote:

    >I'm nervous enough about all the Easter Eggs that have been reported in
    >Netscape, like the secret keystroke shortcut to get to Fishcam, or the
    >different behavior it exhibits when it finds a certain obscurely-named
    >directory at the top level. 

    Would you please elaborate?

Personally, I like the Easter Eggs in Netscape and other software
products.  I don't know if there's an consensus definition of `Easter
Egg', but my working definition is something like ``An unpublicized,
unharmful, preferably amusing, feature for which interested users may
hunt.''  I think that such things add some fun for curious users and
indicate a bit of `hacker spirit' in the development team -- meaning
`hacker' in the classic sense, not the media-bastardize synonym of
`cracker'.  I also think that in Netscape their existance is an
indication that the managment at Netscape is a bit less uptight than
management at some other places.

I didn't know about the FishCam Easter Egg, but I know that Netscape
has a couple of Easter Eggs related to the activity indicator in the
top right of the display.  Typically this is the Big N logo with
animated meteors, etc. flying by when the window is active.  One
Easter Egg temporarily turns this into a compass which spins to
indicate activity.  Another causes the animation to show a dragon
(Mozilla) breathing fire for the remainder of the session.  I won't
spoil your fun by telling how to find them.

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