Some of Microsoft's early products included hidden Easter Eggs. Microsoft formally stopped including Easter Eggs in its programs as part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative in 2002. [1]
Windows 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1 all include an Easter egg, which features a window that shows a list of people who worked on the software along with a "Congrats!" button. Double clicking the list box further changes the background of the window to tiled smiley faces. The instructions for invoking the Easter egg vary depending on the version:[ citation needed ]
Windows 3.0 has a developer credits page which may be accessed by setting the focus to the desktop (by minimizing all windows and clicking on an open area of the desktop) then typing win30
followed by F3 and ← Backspace in quick succession. This causes the developer credits to appear on the desktop in the form of the email names of the crew. [2]
Windows 3.1 has two visible Easter eggs, both of which reference the Microsoft Bear, which was the mascot of the Windows 3.1 development team. [3] One was the developer credits, where the Bear, along with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Brad Silverberg, present the email aliases of the Windows 3.1 developers. bradsi, being in charge of Windows production, is listed first; the three other presenters, billg, steveb, and t-bear, appear together in "Special Thanks", the last section of the list. [4] The other one was a reference to a fictitious file named BEAR.EXE in the properties window for the MS-DOS Prompt. [5] Internally, there was another egg, where several internal system functions (although having meaningful internal names) were exported from user.exe
as BEARNNN
(where NNN is the ordinal number of the function) in his honor and to discourage their use by third-party software developers. The user can also find the easter egg by opening the About Program Manager, holding down Ctrl, Alt and ⇧ Shift, double click one colored square of the Microsoft Windows logo, and then close the window. Open it again and do so with a different square (with the keys still pressed down). Keep repeating this until the Microsoft Bear appears in the window, as seen to the right.[ citation needed ]
Windows 95 has an animated presentation of its developers, complete with music. This page is accessed by renaming a folder on the desktop to "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for", then "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure", and finally "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!". Additionally, a dialog with credits can be invoked from the Windows Help application. [6] [7]
During the development of Windows 95, the shell developers had several stuffed animals as mascots. In addition to the Microsoft Bear, there were two bunnies as well - the smaller 16-bit Bunny and the larger 32-bit Bunny. The bunnies' names referred to the fact that Windows 95 was the transitional OS. [3] The Microsoft Bunny has an exported function named after him, BUNNY_351
in krnl386.exe
. [8] Also, the Bunny is the icon for the Microsoft Party Line (rumor.exe
) in some pre-release versions of Windows 95. In the internet mail app, there is a hidden credits list that can be accessed by clicking Help, About, comctl32.dll, and typing MORTIMER. [9]
Windows 98 has a credits screen Easter egg, which can be triggered by invoking weldata.exe
with the argument "You_are_a_real_rascal" in the command line or a shortcut (.lnk file), or by clicking and dragging between the locations of Memphis, Egypt; Memphis, Tennessee; and Redmond, Washington on the Time Zone map. (This easter egg is a reference to "Memphis" being the development codename of Windows 98.) [10]
A drawing of the Microsoft Bear was used as the icon for the SETDEBUG.EXE
and JDBGMGR.EXE
system files. The odd icon gave credibility to the jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax, which claimed that the files were part of a computer virus. [11] See SULFNBK.EXE for a similar hoax.
The Pipes screensaver in Windows 95 (OSR2 onwards), 98, ME, NT 4.0 and 2000 will occasionally insert a Utah teapot as a joint between pipes when the screensaver is configured to draw multiple, traditional-style pipes with mixed joint types and a solid texture. [12] Windows 2000 and Windows XP have an undocumented texture in the Pipes screensaver (sspipes.scr
) that makes the pipes red and white, similar to candy canes. [13]
An Easter egg that displays the names of all the volcanoes in the United States can be found in the 3D Text screensaver on all versions of Microsoft Windows prior to Windows XP by setting the text to display to "Volcano". [14] In Windows NT 3.5, setting the text to "I love NT" shows the names of the developers. "Rock" and "Beer" lists bands and breweries, respectively. [15] In Windows NT 4.0, the phrase to view the developer credits was changed to "not evil". Setting the text to "I love NT" will instead simply display "good?". [16]
Three images are embedded in the surface of Windows Vista's installation DVD. On one of the images shows the faces of the members of Microsoft's anti-piracy team who worked on the hologram. [17]
In Windows 10 build 16232, the "Windows is checking for a solution to solve the problem..." dialog that appears when a program crashes is replaced with "Windows is opening a portal to another dimension..." [18]
Access 1.0 had a simple animation showing a gun firing and killing two ducks. The story behind this is; one of the team members spoke with a strong accent and when referring to the main competition 'Paradox' it sounded like "Pair o' Ducks". The gun killing the ducks is something like what the earlier release date and ridiculously cheap pricing, did to Paradox. In truth the product was not truly ready for market at the time of the release of 1.0 and it was almost immediately followed up with a free copy of 1.1 for those that could produce evidence of their purchase of 1.0, but the damage had been done to Paradox. Paradox did eventually come to market, and probably with a better product, but by that time, people looking for an all encompassing, low level application and database development platform, were already using Microsoft Access.[ citation needed ]
In Word for Windows 2, there is a simple animation involving a WordPerfect 'Monster', a fireworks display and credits roll in the About box. The user's name (entered in Tools Options) was appended to the end of the "Thanks" section of the credits.[ citation needed ]
The tip of the day would sometimes display the following platitudes. They could also be viewed in the help file. This first appeared in Office 4.3, and also appeared in Office 95, and 97.[ citation needed ]
Using Microsoft Excel 2000 and the Office Web Components, a small 3-D game called "Dev Hunter" (inspired by Spy Hunter) is accessible. [25] [26] DirectX must be installed for this to work, and the egg is incompatible with certain service pack upgrades[ which? ]. On the roadway shown in this game, a list of comments appear, all capitalized:
The game Asteroids is included in the Microsoft Office Notifications application. [27]
These features below were discontinued because Cortana is no longer available.
WAIT6502,1
into a Commodore PET with BASIC V2 (1979) would result in "MICROSOFT!" printed on the top left of the screen, partly overwriting the first line "### COMMODORE BASIC ###". [35] edge://surf
into the address bar in Microsoft Edge versions higher than 83 will allow users to play Surf , a game where the player controls a surfer who must collect powerups and run from a Kraken. This game bears resemblance to SkiFree , another Microsoft-developed game, and has been compared to Google Chrome's Dinosaur Game . [38] The game contains some easter eggs of its own, such as a SkiFree cameo during the "Time Trial" mode and a hidden costume if the Konami Code is entered on the surfer select screen.(Windows)
will cause a green dinosaur to appear.[ citation needed ]The following are not Easter Eggs, but rather features unexpected by many users of Microsoft products.
Every version of Microsoft Word from 97 to 2016 (Windows) or 2004 to 2011 (Mac) contain functions to create filler text. On older versions, typing =rand()
in a Word document and hitting "Enter" results in 3 paragraphs of 5 repetitions of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". Typing =rand(X,Y)
(with numbers for X and Y) results in X paragraphs of Y repetitions of the sentence. For example, =rand(10,10)
will produce ten paragraphs, each with ten repetitions. Microsoft has officially described this as a feature and not an Easter Egg. [39] [40] In Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010, the repeated sentence is replaced with a longer text:
On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look.
You can easily change the formatting of selected text in the document text by choosing a look for the selected text from the Quick Styles gallery on the Home tab. You can also format text directly by using the other controls on the Home tab. Most controls offer a choice of using the look from the current theme or using a format that you specify directly.
To change the overall look of your document, choose new Theme elements on the Page Layout tab. To change the looks available in the Quick Style gallery, use the Change Current Quick Style Set command. Both the Themes gallery and the Quick Styles gallery provide reset commands so that you can always restore the look of your document to the original contained in your current template.
In Microsoft Word 2013, the text was replaced again with [41]
Video provides a powerful way to help you prove your point. When you click on Online Video, you can paste in the embed code for the video you want to add. You can also type a keyword to search online for the video that best fits your document.
To make your document look professionally produced, Word provides header, footer, cover page, and text box designs that complement each other. For example, you can add a matching cover page, header, and sidebar. Click the Insert tab and then choose the elements you want from the different galleries.
Themes and styles also help keep your document coordinated. When you click on Design and choose a new Theme, the pictures, charts, and SmartArt graphics change to match your new theme. When you apply styles, your headings change to match the new theme.
Save time in Word with new buttons that show up where you need them. To change the way a picture fits in your document, click it and a button for layout options appears next to it. When you work on a table, click where you want to add a row or a column, and then click the plus sign tab.
Reading is easier, too, in the new Reading view. You can collapse parts of the document and focus on the text you want. If you need to stop reading before you reach the end, Word remembers where you left off - even on another device.
When =rand(1,1)
is written, only a simple sentence is shown: in English, it is "On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document." [39]
In Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and online, the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" text is available by typing the command =rand.old()
and pressing enter. [39]
Additionally, typing =lorem()
gives the following text: [39]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. Nunc viverra imperdiet enim. Fusce est. Vivamus a tellus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin pharetra nonummy pede. Mauris et orci.
Typing =lorem(N)
will produce "N" (where N is an integer) lines of lorem ipsum text. When "N" is larger than 27, the function begins to repeat itself.
All of these features will be disabled when "Replace text as you type" is turned off. [39]
In Microsoft Word 2021, when dark mode is enabled, the picture icon in the insert tab replaces the sun with a moon.
CON
(case insensitive). This has been subject to a hoax that claims Microsoft is unable to explain why. [42] In reality, CON
along with PRN
, AUX
, COM#
(where # is a digit) and NUL
, are reserved device names. [43] ILOVEBUNNY32=1
under the Windows
section in win.ini
. The features were later sold in the Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 add-on. [44] title.wma
(an environmental mix by Stan LePard. [47] ) is found in \WINDOWS\system32\oobe\images
folder. (OOBE stands for Out-of-box experience.) The file metadata calls it "Windows Welcome Music By Microsoft". This is the background music played during the initial configuration wizard used to perform tasks such as setting up user accounts the first time that a new installation of Windows XP is used. In Windows Server 2003 and some builds of Longhorn, title.wma
is instead replaced by the song No Hay Problema, produced by Oregon-based band Pink Martini. The original Windows XP version was believed to be composed by Stan LePard. It was previously used in Internet Starter Kit 3 and Encarta Virtual Globe 1998 Edition. [48] dialer.exe
) directly. This was only documented in Windows 95 and Windows 98.[ citation needed ]GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C
) it creates a Control Panel applet with all control panel items view (more than 200) enabled. [50] In computing, Xyzzy is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable or as a video game cheat code. Xyzzy comes from the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game, where it is the first "magic string" that most players encounter.
An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another—usually electronic—medium. The term used in this manner was coined around 1979 by Steve Wright, the then-Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, to describe a hidden message in the Atari video game Adventure, in reference to an Easter egg hunt.
The Office Assistant is a discontinued intelligent user interface for Microsoft Office that assisted users by way of an interactive animated character which interfaced with the Office help content. It was included in Microsoft Office for Windows, in Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Project, Microsoft FrontPage, and Microsoft Office for Mac. The Office Assistant used technology initially from Microsoft Bob and later Microsoft Agent, offering advice based on Bayesian algorithms.
File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file systems, as well as user interface elements such as the taskbar and desktop.
The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running programs. The taskbar and the associated Start Menu were created and named in 1993 by Daniel Oran, a program manager at Microsoft who had previously collaborated on great ape language research with the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner at Harvard.
WordPad is a word processor included with Windows 95 and later. Similarly to its predecessor Microsoft Write, it is a basic word processor, positioned as more advanced than the Notepad text editor by supporting rich text editing, but with a subset of the functionality of Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Office XP is an office suite which was officially revealed in July 2000 by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. Office XP was released to manufacturing on March 5, 2001, and was later made available to retail on May 31, 2001. A Mac OS X equivalent, Microsoft Office v. X was released on November 19, 2001.
Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser winhelp.exe or winhlp32.exe. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from Windows 3.0 through Windows XP. WinHelp was removed in Windows Vista purportedly to discourage software developers from using the obsolete format and encourage use of newer help formats. Support for WinHelp files would eventually be removed entirely in Windows 10.
As the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000, as well as the successor to Windows Me, Windows XP introduced many new features but it also removed some others.
Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. Windows Vista also removed some others.
The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its readily identifiable elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, the Start menu, the task switcher and the AutoPlay feature. On some versions of Windows, it also includes Flip 3D and the charms. In Windows 10, the Windows Shell Experience Host interface drives visuals like the Start Menu, Action Center, Taskbar, and Task View/Timeline. However, the Windows shell also implements a shell namespace that enables computer programs running on Windows to access the computer's resources via the hierarchy of shell objects. "Desktop" is the top object of the hierarchy; below it there are a number of files and folders stored on the disk, as well as a number of special folders whose contents are either virtual or dynamically created. Recycle Bin, Libraries, Control Panel, This PC and Network are examples of such shell objects.
The Text Services Framework (TSF) is a COM framework and API in Windows XP and later Windows operating systems that supports advanced text input and text processing. The Language Bar is the core user interface for Text Services Framework.
Microsoft PowerToys is a set of freeware system utilities designed for power users developed by Microsoft for use on the Windows operating system. These programs add or change features to maximize productivity or add more customization. PowerToys are available for Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 10 and Windows 11. The PowerToys for Windows 10 and Windows 11 are free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License and hosted on GitHub.
Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) is speech recognition developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista that enables voice commands to control the desktop user interface, dictate text in electronic documents and email, navigate websites, perform keyboard shortcuts, and operate the mouse cursor. It supports custom macros to perform additional or supplementary tasks.
Windows Search is a content index and desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for the previous Indexing Service of Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, designed to facilitate local and remote queries for files and non-file items in the Windows Shell and in compatible applications. It was developed after the postponement of WinFS and introduced to Windows several benefits of that platform.
QBasic is an integrated development environment (IDE) and interpreter for a variety of dialects of BASIC which are based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled to an intermediate representation (IR), and this IR is immediately executed on demand within the IDE.
The jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax involved an e-mail spam in 2002 that advised computer users to delete a file named jdbgmgr.exe because it was a computer virus. jdbgmgr.exe, which had a little teddy bear like icon, was actually a valid Microsoft Windows file, the Debugger Registrar for Java.
Windows Phone 8.1 is the third generation of Microsoft Mobile's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8. Rolled out at Microsoft's Build Conference in San Francisco, California on April 2, 2014, it was released in final form to Windows Phone developers on April 14, 2014 and reached general availability on August 4, 2014. All Windows Phones running Windows Phone 8 can be upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1, with release dependent on carrier rollout dates.
Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for users.
Windows 10 introduced a number of new elements, including the option to use a touch-optimized interface or a traditional desktop interface similar to that of Windows 7 along with live tiles from Windows 8. However, unlike previous versions of Windows, where most, if not all, major features for that release were completed by its RTM, Windows 10 continues to receive major features and changes beyond its initial release to market. Microsoft describes Windows 10 as an "operating system as a service" that will receive ongoing updates to its features and functionality. This is supplemented with the ability for enterprise environments to receive non-critical updates at a slower pace, and to use long-term support milestones that will only receive critical updates, such as security patches, over their ten-year lifespan of support.
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