Forum Moderators: phranque
In programming these sorts of things are often called "easter eggs" - little hidden treats that don't really have any function other than to cause delight upon discovery. Early Mac software was famous for having many hidden easter eggs - things that only showed up if you held down the option key while requesting file information, for example.
Some weeks ago I was talking with iamlost about classical typographic proportions for webpages. People may not realize that many books, well back into the Middle Ages, were designed with cleverly interlocking sets of proportions linking the size of the text block to the width of the margins to the proportions of the paper. One familar modern carryover is the paperbacks in the Penguin Classics series, which were long manufactured with page proportions that embody the Golden Ratio (1:1.618).
In keeping with this tradition, I use a standard em-scale for all the horizontal dimensions on my own website (vertical scales are harder, because they are less predictable); in simplified form it looks something like this:
43.00 em width of content
13.69 em width of sidebar
4.36 em width of blockquote right margin
1.39 em width of padding, text-indent, list inset
0.44 em width of hanging indent
Spot the hidden "easter egg"? (Each value is pi times the previous value.) It makes for rather nice proportions, and within the content and sidebar blocks the em-width of the padding is 3.14 em itself.
So, what other fun features have people built into their sites? Perhaps a popup window that appears only when you click somewhere that isn't obviously a link? An amusing comment within the HTML file that only appears when someone views the source? (I have my .htaccess file headed with the comment "stone knives and bearskins" - some old timers will recognize that....)
Some are simply hidden navigational short-cuts tucked behind 'routine' graphics. The really cool surprises pop-up a window in which a heavily modified random quote CGI cycles through selections featured elsewhere on-site as singles.
I'd hide more Easter Eggs but I prefer to keep my code more simple than not for maximum browser compatibility. And as pop-up blockers and such become increasingly common, it's more challenging (tho' still geekily fun as heck) to craft broad-based special extras. I look forward to reading about others' surprises!
For those who care (all n->null of you) both pi and phi show up all over the mathematical, natural, philosophical, cosmological, chaotic place. Very intreguing useful numbers.
My phi uses are two-fold.
* One: Where possible I size page objects 1:0.618. It really looks good to the eye. As does the 'golden rectangle' (esp. for image/description): If the img/desc object is 1:0.618 the image is sized as 0.618 x 0.618 and the descriptiuon gets the remainder of 0.618 x 0.382. And yes using pi the rjohara way is simpler...but I am a geek and I like to suffer for my art.
* Two: It is common to use some extraordinary prime as the basis for encryption. So it confuses the heck out of (most) brute force decryption programs to utilise the golden mean base (aka phinary base) on a (phi) logarithmic spiral encoding structure.
Some easter eggs (note lower case to recognise lack of chocolate) I have included on sites:
* an order of a-certain-item or a-certain-value getting an especially good unadvertised additional discount. Amusing how many customers would request orders of that item/value over the next week. Then it would disappear from folks' radar until the next time someone 'found' it.
* a 'free-use' graphic from a renowned illustrator/cartoonist would be the 'thanks' page upon a viewer submitting a comment.
* a music group included unspecified, unadvertised extra songs available only for mp3 download upon on-line purchase of their CDs.
Fun stuff and great marketing.
Brett's robots.txt blog is both. A classic.
The things a geek gets excited about...I need a life...anyone got an extra?
I run a site that deals with cartoons- it deals with them in a historical and factual way. I have slipped in a couple of "fake" cartoons- mainly from "Maroon Studios"- the company that "made" the original Roger Rabbit cartoons in the 1940's. (Which, of course, never really happened). Included are even fake title cards and release posters.
Dave
