The secret history of the about:jwz url

http://www.jwz.org/doc/about-jwz.html

by cpeterso • 15 years ago

175 18 15 years ago

gkoberger• 15 years ago

about:authors has been removed from Firefox, however we now have about:credits. No about:jwz anymore either, however about:mozilla (which he mentioned) still has a "passage" from the Book of Mozilla, which has a fairly interesting history [1]. And you can go to the very meta-y about:about for a list of a bunch of the more common about:* pages.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mozilla

lowglow• 15 years ago

It's cool that jwz now owns DNA Lounge in SF. I love learning where the old-school guys have settled. My gf's boss at Wired is Kevin Poulsen -- that's pretty exciting too.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

At one point, didn't about:ie or about:msie or something display a blue page in mozilla?

Macha• 15 years ago

Other way around: about:mozilla displayed a blue screen in old versions of IE.

ComputerGuru3• 15 years ago

I downvoted you by accident. Twitch of the finger. Sorry.

ComputerGuru3• 15 years ago

I was not being sarcastic or facetious.

wglb• 15 years ago

In which we learn about the anti-easter egg:

<ANIM KEY=zs7NzcrM1dfG29PM SALT=29PZ HASH=38jT68fN38hZ68lN01HRT2vnWdVX91NZZ1N3>

aquarin• 15 years ago

I remember, inserting this in pages with hope to show compass without success.

hannibalhorn• 15 years ago

I dunno, easter egg or not, adding special behavior to the browser for any url which contains /jwz/ seems really hackish and unprofessional. Those were very different times, I guess.

dextorious2• 15 years ago

"""seems really hackish and unprofessional."""

Whatever, gray suit man.

"""Those were very different times, I guess."""

No, today still there are huge multinational companies that allow their programmers to have fun doing similar things. Besides there being nothing "unprofessional" (sic) about it, it also can bring in tons of good publicity and viral interest.

hamletdrc2• 15 years ago

Do you have any examples of hue multinational companies that allow programmers to insert Easter eggs? I can't think of a single business software vendor that has Easter eggs anymore. Even MS has stopped doing it.

I do all my work in big companies and they have all been universally against humorous test data, humorous naming conventions, or an sort of Easter egg.

Cite?

kghose2• 15 years ago

There was something about both the jwz and the chouck pages that brought back nostalgic feelings for me, to my first exposure to the internet and "big" computing at the computing center with the big AIX and O2 machines that ran Netscape with visible quantization and sweet little animated icons. (Not just the content of the pages, but the design and the animations)

Those pages /look/ antique, in a fine way, I dunno why. A throwback to a more ... civilized .. age (I had to do that).

kghose2• 15 years ago

I guess it was partly the guy's driver's license scan on his webpage. It reminded me somehow of a more innocent age, where people had great dreams of an open and "futuristic" future.

asadotzler• 15 years ago

and Dan Mosedale is still with Mozilla today :D

The secret history of the about:jwz url

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