By: David Blatner
May 2 2007 • 8:12 PM
The Martian Easter Egg (CS2 and CS3)
Anne-Marie and Sandee Cohen and I are currenly at The Pixel Conference and The Vector Conference in Chicago, Illinois. (Anne-Marie is just about to go on stage to do a session on cool stuff in Adobe Bridge, and Sandee is about to do a session on Fireworks.)
But after I showed the butterfly easter egg trick in a class yesterday, one attendee asked if there was a Martian in CS2… Yes! So, I know we’ve had a lot of talk on easter egg features recently, but forgive me… I just have to talk about one more:
To find the Martian easter egg in CS2 (this works in CS3, too):
- Open the Print dialog box (File > Print).
- Click the Save Preset button
- Name the preset “Friendly Alien” (no quotes) and click OK.
- Click in the page proxy area in the lower-left corner of the Print dialog box window and wait a moment.
martian
Okay, that’s it! I’m done. No more easter eggs. (Well, at least for a while… 
) But remember: If you’re not having fun while using InDesign, you’re not doing it right!
Wow! That’s really an unexpected place for an alien…
There used to be two more in version 2, haven’t checked if they are still there, but anyway:
If you go to the about box (”Help > About” on Windows, “InDesign > About” on Mac I believe) and then type “bounce” (without the quotes), you get some colored circles bouncing around. Similarly, if you type “svg” (again without the quotes), you get some type saying “svg” going crazy. But I doubt they kept the SVG one, given that Flash is now part of the Creative Suite…
Also in InDesign 2, if you typed Mandelbrot, fractals showed up.
Can’t see those peter, nor any About option in the Help menu that allows searches. If I type “bounce” or “svg” in the separate Help program for InDesign nothing happens.
Checking for “bounce” and “svg” was the first thing I did when I got CS3…heh. Nope, they’re gone.
I think Adobe should put a goatee on the Martian so it’d look more like David.
Har har, Anne-Marie. I’ll have you know that I keep my antennae hidden when I’m in public.
With CS2, I found the martian, but not the fractlals or bouncing balls.