At Easter, parents like to hide eggs, chickens and chocolate rabbits in the garden so that children have the happiness of going to look for them. In the same way, Easter Eggs, or literally Easter eggs, are small “surprises” hidden in games or programs by developers. For Easter, web development is in the spotlight this year. Google has a habit of placing Easter Eggs in its products and services. These animations, in the form of games, messages, images or even complete software, have no other function than to give you a good sense of humor.
- Pac-Man in Google Maps
First, a special button on Google Maps allows you to play Pac-Man for a few days through real mapped streets. These are transformed for the occasion into a playground where Pac-Man will move to swallow all the drafts while avoiding the ghosts. Choose your city and neighborhood, click and access an interactive game area a few blocks away. An originality of web development that we would love to enjoy all year long!
- Dance on the Google I / O website
While waiting for Google I / O at the end of May, a dedicated site is already available and Google offers small experiments, such as the Easter Egg hidden in the mixing console for students of music composers in HTML5 (click on the small round settings In the bottom right). From your browser’s JavaScript console, follow the instructions and admire the man who dances in ASCII art.
- The little SF tricks of YouTube
Enter “Transmit Scotty” in the YouTube search bar. Your results will appear as if they had escaped directly from Star Trek USS Enterprise. Otherwise, write “Use the force Luke” and the results will float around the screen in the same way that Luke did in Star Wars.
- Special for players
Googlez “Zerg rush” (technique well known by StarCraft players), you will be surprised to see an open mini-game, in which the rebellious “O” letters of the word Google will violently attack your search results. If you write “conway life game”, you will have access to a game inspired by cellular automata imagined in 1970 by the mathematician John Conway.