 |
Easter Egg Heaven |  |
 Easter
Eggs are little programs hidden in the programs you buy that do cute to amazing
things. Some of them, like the
flight simulator hidden in Microsoft's Excel® , are fun. (I'll show you how
to access it below.) They may or may not
be known about and even endorsed by the company. Others, like what happens when
you check 'zzzz' in spell check (more later), I'm sure are not. You see, I work with
programmers. I know programmers and they are really creative. After a hard day of
creating and proofing code, they like to insert their own bit of creativity into
a program. Hence the idea, the growth and proliferation of "Easter Eggs".
Technically, an "Easter
Egg" is a 'hidden program' but, many of us consider it to be any hint or
tip that helps us use programs better. OK, well I'm anything
but a real programmer (duh) but I did create this site. So, I'm going to be
planting my own "Easter Eggs" around the site in the future.You may see a flashing
"egg" or after 30 seconds a word might start to flash different colors like these
occasionally do. Let me give you some
examples. Do you know how to copy the contents of this box so you can print or
save it? Well, 9 out of 10 people
using the Internet and/or their word processors don't. I was lucky enough to have
an engineer show me a few years ago. So, let me show you.
It's incredibly simple. You highlight the text you want to copy and then Type
Ctrl-C. Then open your word processor and Type Ctrl-V. It's that simple. In
most cases there is a copy and paste button, but for menus and alert boxes and
copying URLs, using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V is your only answer. OK, so you want
to know how to get to the Flight Simulator in Excel 97. Here's the step by
step way to do it. (Aren't you glad you can copy this with Ctrl-C?) 1. Open Excel and Hit F5 2. Type X97:L97 and Hit Enter Note: On XL 2000 Try X2000:L2000 3. Hit the tab key once 4. Hold Ctrl-Shift  5.
Click on the Chart Wizard Toolbar Button. See my picture at right.6. Use your mouse to fly 7. Hit escape to exit How about a way
to cheat at solitaire. Oh yes, there's a way to cheat at anything (if you
want). Anyway as you know you can play with 3 cards turned at a time and you go
through the deck 3 times, or you can turn every card and you go through the deck
once. Well, if you play the
3-card way as I do, after you've gone through once or twice, you might want to
change to the 1-card method. Well, all you do is
hold down the Ctrl-ALT-Shift keys as you click the pile with your mouse, and viola,
it's one card per click. There are some "Easter
Eggs" that I'm sure the companies don't want you to know about. If you use
Office 97 or Word 97, enter 'zzzz' on a page and check the spelling (you can right
click your mouse to the right of the word if you like. It's a shortcut that's
quick and handy anytime). If you're not over 18, don't do it. Also, if you type the
words "I want", highlight them and then hit the thesaurus, look at one of the
choices you'll find. Ah the programmers
are really a kick. If you think about it, it's the programmers that are really
running the world. So, if they think it's funny, it's funny. If they don't, it's
not.Programming is a really
intense 'art form' and for the most part I DO NOT think programmers have
been recognized for their talents. In the next decade I predict they will be running
the world. Stay tuned, I've got
lots of "Easter Eggs" to share with you from easy things like HOW DO YOU CHANGE
THIS TO "how do you change this to" with one click. In Microsoft Word,
go to the Format pull down menu and click on "Change Case". You have lots of choices.
The power of the
programs we use is so awesome that few of us ever know even 1/3 of what we can
do. You see, I want DAK to be the exciting place to find useful, powerful
and yes fun things we can do. If you're a programmer
and you've put an "Easter Egg" in a widely used program that you'd like to share,
or if you've just found one you'd like to share, eMail me atEasterEgg@dak.com. |
 |
[ CLOSE DEFINITION ] |  |