I love finding hidden places in websites.
These days most of the hidden 'easter eggs' I find tend to do with the alt attributes of images – the text you see when you hover your mouse over a picture.
But man, back in the 90s, I was finding hidden things all over the place.
I love it when I roll over a seemingly unimportant graphic and I see entertaing alt text. (The SEO-obsessed masses might take offense at hiding non-keyword messages in images, but honestly - shoosh. Anyway, it's better than "left_corner_gaphic_4.jpg"...decorative elements being a popular place to hide 'secret' messages). Obviously a screen reader can make this a little less hidden...
I also love it when I view a website’s source code and see the developer has left comments - relevant or not. Or hidden an extra message in text the same colour as the background. Or a hyplink on an innocuous block of colour that leads to a ‘secret’ bonus page. Changing a URL based on onsite clues to find a bonus directory.
Then again, these days a lot of 404 pages are exciting enough to feel like an easter egg on their own...
Sure, Google can index your easter egg content, allowing searchers to hit it without going through your mysterious web trail (though norobots.txt or other methods can prevent this of course).
I'm not talking about accessibility standards or optimisation or anything you'd expect me to be behind as a developer. I'm just talking about having a little fun.
Yes, I know. Hidden content isn’t appropriate everywhere.
On a personal site, however… I only spent about two hours building this Blogger skin when I started Fish out of Order, and I’ve been meaning to come back and clean it up. I have two weeks off coming up in January… maybe I’ll add some hidden surprises then.
While I'm at it - Dinosaur Comics has some of my favourite alt text messages ever.
Also, this easter egg will cover your website in glitter when a user enters the Konami code. Go forth and Cornify.
