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Easter Eggs.

Are they the hidden code of bored engineers or a chance for rebellion in a corporate world? Or is it just an opportunity of whimsy? Not sure, don't care, they are fun to find in either your movies' DVDs or your computer application. Adobe's engineers didn't disappoint in CS3—there is something in almost every program, and a few have more than one. Some of the applications' easter eggs have been so hidden that they resist being found, or there are none to be found.

The following is a compilation of what we at Applelinks have been able to find. If you know of any that we've missed, please pass them on to us. We'll be glad to acknowledging your discovery.

Acrobat

• Not sure if this is an Easter Egg or what, but if you press the Option key when selecting About Acrobat, and then click on the Adobe icon in the lower left of the window, a sheet will drop down from the About menu with data on the Build (date), AGM, CoolType, Core, JP2K, and ADM. Not sure what any of this is for or about.

Bridge

• (None found)

Dreamweaver:

• With any document or site open, go to the Commands menu and select Create Web Photo Album. In the first field type "play a game." Click OK and play a game of Mastermind (Hint: click multiple times in the same rectangle to access the 6 possible colors, hack your way to figure out the rest of the game).

Illustrator

• Press the Option key as you select About Illustrator and you can see the face of Venus--an earlier icon for Illustrator.
• With a document open (new, old, saved, doesn't matter), look at the bottom left and you will see a magnification scale and to the right of that you will see something and an arrowhead pointing to the right. If you mouse-down on the arrowhead you will see the word "Show" and a drop down menu from there. Release the mouse, press the Option key and once again mouse-down on the right facing arrowhead and now look at the options for "Show."

InDesign

• Open a new page and make a new Printing Preset (File > Print Presets > Define) and name it "Friendly Alien;" the settings don't matter. Save it, then go to the Print dialog, change the Print Preset to Friendly Alien, and click on the Preview window in the lower left corner. Soon, a small space ship will appear.
• Bring up the "About InDesign" window, and, from the keyboard, type "butterfly." For an extra bonus, click on the butterflies. If you feel that this is cruel, you can click again to release them. Finally, if you wait long enough, an extra thing will fly by.

FireWorks:

• Open the "About FireWorks" window and press the Control key and click just above the word Adobe on the upper left side. You will see a slide show of the engineers who work on FireWorks.

Flash

• Bring up the About Flash window. In the upper left you will see the words: "Adobe (R) Flash (R)." If you double-click on the 2nd (R), you will be treated to a slide show of the various Flash engineers.

Photoshop

• Hold the Command Key as you select the About Photoshop... from the Photoshop menu. Here you will see a large "red pill" that comes from the beta name of this version: Red Pill.
• Hold down the Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Win) key and choose "About Photoshop..." Take a screen shot of the beta splash screen (use either PNG, PSD, PDF, or TIFF. Do not use JPEG or GIF or other lossy formats). Open the image in PS, choose Levels and:
  1. Take the right (white) triangle and slide it slowly to the left and you will see a rabbit and a hole to the left. By the time you get the slider all the way to the left you will see rabbit footprints on the window. The rabbit link is to the code name for PS CS3-"-Red Pill"
  2. Then return the white slider and take the left black point slider and move it all the way to the right. If you haven't heard of Bruce Fraser, Google him; he passed away last year while Photoshop CS3 was still in development.

See our reviews of Adobe CS3 products.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.