Who doesn’t like good surprises? I’m sure you do, and so do I. Hidden messages and features add a touch of humor and/or cleverness to a work, which captivates the user. These things makes us want to show our findings to friends, thus spreading a website or a work.
And this is what I’m doing today by gathering a roundup of cool hidden features in websites and design-related software. Some of them may already be known by some of you, nevertheless I hope it provides inspiration as much as it did to me – not by the secret itself, but by the act of putting more thought on our work. Who doesn’t like good surprises? I’m sure you do, and so do I. Hidden messages and features add a touch of humor and/or cleverness to a work, which captivates the user. These things makes us want to show our findings to friends, thus spreading a website or a work.
And this is what I’m doing today by gathering a roundup of cool hidden features in websites and design-related software. Some of them may already be known by some of you, nevertheless I hope it provides inspiration as much as it did to me – not by the secret itself, but by the act of putting more thought on our work.
Let’s start with W3.org, home of the famous World Wide Web Consortium. The website recently suffered a complete redesign, and with that a cool feature: if you resize your browser window, there’s a point where the design changes to its mobile version.
Speaking of window resizing, Paul Annett pointed out this one in his SXSW’09 talk: Twequency site has an easter egg based on that:
@iamkhayyam also added an easter egg in his Twitter background, but this time you can only see by expanding your browser window (or if you have a huge display):
Is the code above familiar to you? Well, maybe not to you, but it is for thousands of people who played (and still play) Konami games. It’s a famous cheat code created in 1986 and since then it’s been used in many games, giving extra lives and other bonuses when performed. Many websites incorporated it through JavaScript:
PHP.net. The classic and famous PHP language official website displays a different logo if you type the code and hit enter.
The Globe And Mail, a Canadian newspaper website:
There’s another kind of hidden secrets in websites: the ones discovered by observation and interaction.
Another tip from Paul Annett: let’s look at Kyan Media website’s footer. An illustrated footer – apparently the side ends there. But if you click the worm…
Now let’s look at Meomi studio website. It’s a very cool illustrated style, full of interaction points. While some of them are not really hidden, it shows that the creators put a lot of thought and hand care into the site.
Depending on your browser window, you won’t see the evil guy hidden in the midst of the sheeps of Miro’s website.
Dave Werner’s portfolio also has hidden videos among the photos of his works. I’m highlighting one – can you spot the other?
Some easter eggs aren’t visual. Instead, they’re hidden in the website coding, like Atmosphir’s:
And to finish with websites, the classic one: Yahoo’s “YahooOOOoo!” choir if you click the logo’s exclamation.
There’s a lot of easter eggs hidden in softwares, specially the ones we use everyday. Just to show a few of them:
In Photoshop, go to Photoshop, hold Cmd and click About Photoshop. If you’re a Windows user, go to Help, hold Ctrl and click About Photoshop. It will show Photoshop’s codename splash screen (Stonehenge), and if you hold Option/Alt, the credits will scroll faster. Wait for the end and see a little surprise dedicated to you.
In Illustrator, repeat the same process above but holding Option/Alt instead. You’ll see the splashing screen with Venus’ face, from Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
Still in Illustrator, if you hold your Option/Alt key and click on the selection menu at the bottom, it shows you how the number of shopping days until Christmas. Why? Don’t ask me!
That’s it, I hope you liked and feel a little more inspired about putting more thought on your works. And of course, to hunt more easter eggs out there!
Let’s start with W3.org, home of the famous World Wide Web Consortium. The website recently suffered a complete redesign, and with that a cool feature: if you resize your browser window, there’s a point where the design changes to its mobile version.
Speaking of window resizing, Paul Annett pointed out this one in his SXSW’09 talk: Twequency site has an easter egg based on that:
@iamkhayyam also added an easter egg in his Twitter background, but this time you can only see by expanding your browser window (or if you have a huge display):
Is the code above familiar to you? Well, maybe not to you, but it is for thousands of people who played (and still play) Konami games. It’s a famous cheat code created in 1986 and since then it’s been used in many games, giving extra lives and other bonuses when performed. Many websites incorporated it through JavaScript:
PHP.net. The classic and famous PHP language official website displays a different logo if you type the code and hit enter.
The Globe And Mail, a Canadian newspaper website:
There’s another kind of hidden secrets in websites: the ones discovered by observation and interaction.
Another tip from Paul Annett: let’s look at Kyan Media website’s footer. An illustrated footer – apparently the side ends there. But if you click the worm…
Now let’s look at Meomi studio website. It’s a very cool illustrated style, full of interaction points. While some of them are not really hidden, it shows that the creators put a lot of thought and hand care into the site.
Depending on your browser window, you won’t see the evil guy hidden in the midst of the sheeps of Miro’s website.
Dave Werner’s portfolio also has hidden videos among the photos of his works. I’m highlighting one – can you spot the other?
Some easter eggs aren’t visual. Instead, they’re hidden in the website coding, like Atmosphir’s:
And to finish with websites, the classic one: Yahoo’s “YahooOOOoo!” choir if you click the logo’s exclamation.
There’s a lot of easter eggs hidden in softwares, specially the ones we use everyday. Just to show a few of them:
In Photoshop, go to Photoshop, hold Cmd and click About Photoshop. If you’re a Windows user, go to Help, hold Ctrl and click About Photoshop. It will show Photoshop’s codename splash screen (Stonehenge), and if you hold Option/Alt, the credits will scroll faster. Wait for the end and see a little surprise dedicated to you.
In Illustrator, repeat the same process above but holding Option/Alt instead. You’ll see the splashing screen with Venus’ face, from Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
Still in Illustrator, if you hold your Option/Alt key and click on the selection menu at the bottom, it shows you how the number of shopping days until Christmas. Why? Don’t ask me!
That’s it, I hope you liked and feel a little more inspired about putting more thought on your works. And of course, to hunt more easter eggs out there!