Easter Eggs

This article is not about easter eggs of the chocolate variety, but those hidden within software and other media. They can range from developer credits to extensions to that bit of software or even completely unrelated programs. They are becoming rarer nowadays in mainstream software due to the heightened security status – Microsoft have banned their programmers from including any since 2000. But there are still many out there. Below, the author has listed some of the most common.

Google Earth Flight Simulator:
Since version 4.2 there has been a flight simulator within Google Earth, accessible by the keyboard combination CTRL + ALT + A (Mac users will find it is Cmd + Opt + A)

Internet Explorer Developer credits:
This Egg is only available in Internet Explorer 7 and it's really a way for developers to get their credit, because they get credit as Microsoft. By typing the following into the Adress bar:
javascript:window.name="TheWCEE";location.href="res://shdoclc.dll/wcee.htm"
you get a hidden page of Developer credits

Mozilla Firefox:
Similar to the above, but gives you a quote from the “Book of Mozilla” which is a book about the beginnings of Firefox. Type about:Mozilla into the address bar.

Google Language tools:
Go to:
http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools?hl=en
Scroll down to the section entitled Use the Google Interface in Your Language
You should see all the conventional language conversions. However, nestled in there somewhere are several you may not expect, such as Hacker and Klingon. As long as you are fairly used to the google layout navigation is fairly easy in these languages, which the author found added to the amusement of this particular egg.

This is just a very small selection of the most current eggs around from windows and macs, but by their very definition they are not promoted by the designers of software and films. Often finding such easter eggs is by trial and error or through blind luck.

NOTE: If anyone has any current eggs that I havent included(very likely as this list is short!) i'll put them in. Whilst i found a lot of things purporting to be easter eggs they were either cheats or known features therefore not easter eggs so i have not included these


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