Easter eggs are there to lighten up the mood and they do so by shocking us or making us laugh. Here are a selecte few Easter eggs from some of the most popular software.
Adobe Photoshop CS3
Photoshop has quite a few Easter eggs, but one of the coolest ones is the red pill. Hold down [Ctrl] and [Alt] and go to Help > About Photoshop. Instead of the default About information screen, you will now see one with a red pill on the left and text on the right saying Adobe Red Pill.
Do you take the blue pill or the red?
Merlin the wizard is one known character on many Photoshop releases, and in CS3, you can find him by first enabling the Layers window. Hold down the [Alt] key and click on the down arrow for that window, choose Palette Options and a small window pops up, with a picture of the wizard and “Merlin Lives!”.
Windows XP
A typical Windows XP installation contains a music theme that’s hidden away in a folder C:\WINDOWS\system32\ oobe\images. Enter this location in the address bar on Windows Explorer as it’s a hidden folder. The track is called title.wma. Double click on it to run it and enjoy the Windows Welcome music.
Create Files With No Name
If you have ever tried to create a file or folder with just a space on it, Windows will show an alert and it not allow you to create it just like with the name CON. If you try holding down the [Alt] key and enter 255, an empty space will be created. Press [Enter] and the file or folder will be created with no name.
uTorrent
uTorrent has an interesting little Easter egg in it. Start uTorrent and click on Help > About uTorrent.
Pass your time playing Tetris while your torrents download
Click on the logo on the left top, and a sound will be played—something like the one used in THX trailers. An even more surprising Easter egg can be found in the same window. Press [Ctrl] [T] and you will find a small tetris game running. Use the arrow keys to rotate and to move the blocks into place.
Notepad
Notepad is a text editor and not many believe there is an Easter egg in it. Create a new Notepad text file and type in bush hid the facts. Save the file and close it. Re-open the file to see what you find. Even if you type this app can break, you will get the same results—garbled text. This is not technically an Easter egg, but an issue.
WinRAR
Although WinRAR’s just another compression utility, it also has a few hidden eggs. These can be found in the About window. First, make sure you are using the default WinRAR theme.
WinRAR easter egg has a pile of books sliding about
Click on Help > About WinRAR. Click on the pile of books on the left, and you’ll see them slide down. Instead, if you hold down [Ctrl] [Shift] and click on the WinRAR logo with the background of the seashore, you’ll see the waves beginning to pour in and out.
Firefox
Firefox has a silly Easter egg, which can be viewed by entering about kitchensink in the location bar (note that there’s no colon). A kitchen sink made up of ASCII characters will open up with water flowing down it. You need to be connected to the Internet for this. You can also get the same result in other browsers by entering the keywords about kitchensink in Google and selecting I’m Feeling Lucky.
Counter-Strike CT-Spawn
It’s not just software that come with Easter eggs, there are games as well. One of the most widely played games—Counter-Strike—has many Easter eggs built into it. One of them is in the map de_dust2. First, join the Counter-Terrorist team and type kill in the console. When you join into free fly mode, move into the walls facing the terrorist team and you will the see the credits for the map. You might have to host your own server for this with free fly enabled for the map.
3DRealms Error 404 page
3DRealms is now best known for delaying Duke Nukem Forever…forever. Even they have a little Easter egg of their own.
The people at 3drealms greet you when you type a wrong URL
Enter a wrong URL to their site, say www.3drealms.com/blahblahblah. You will find a page with altered pictures of the people at 3drealms with random comments.
Winamp
Winamp has a challenging Easter egg in older versions of Winamp, which can make you lose your mouse click if you try hard. Get to Winamp’s Preferences window by right clicking on Winamp, then on Options > Preferences. Go to Plug-ins > Input. Click on the Nullsoft Vorbis Decoder plugin, and click on the About button. A fish logo will appear on the left with the credits. Click on the fish and you will see it spin. Click a number of times, and a small meter measuring the rotations per minute will appear. Left-clicking on it rotates the fish to the left, and a right-click rotates it to the right. Digit is not responsible for the loss or damage done to any mouse buttons!
Head banging with the llamas
Winamp has another trick that works with Winamp 5.0 and higher. First make sure you have the Modern skin selected and stretch the main window to the right using the right bottom edge till you find a Beat analyser at the centre. Hold down the [Ctrl] [Alt] [Shift] and click the centre till you get two llamas on either side. Now load up a song and play and watch the llamas’ head bob in rhythm with the music.