WordPress 3.0 Easter Egg Hunt!

Easter eggs fascinates me a lot and since I read about presence of new easter eggs in latest wordpress 3.0, I am continuously hunting for them since last few hours.

Below is stuff I have found and conclusions I have made. Not sure if we can call them easter egg(s), but one of them is definitely a bug!  Reason for putting my uncertain findings here is – some like-minded easter eggs lover may cook an omelet out of this! 😉

#1 – Easter Egg hint must be in text…

First thing I noticed was, Matt asked to look for HD video when he hinted about easter eggs. HD videos are high in quality and one big difference between HD/non-HD screen-casts is that text in HD videos is readable.

So I think Easter egg hint must be in text somewhere but after watching that video more than 10 times and reading almost every character in that video I noticed very few things.

#2 – Easter egg could be introduced in WordPress 3.o-RC3-15241 Release

While watching that video, I noticed that WordPress 3.o-RC3-15241 release is used in video. (see screenshot below)

For easter egg to be present in video, easter egg must be introduced in WordPress revision <= 15241. This lead me to check changes in code between 15241 and its previous revisions. WordPress 3.0-RC2 has revision @15204. I ran a simple SVN command to get code difference between these two revisions like below…

svn diff http://core.svn.wordpress.org/@15204 http://core.svn.wordpress.org/@15241 > wp-egg.patch

I opened wp-egg.patch file in vim for ease of readability but after checking codes for long time, I couldn’t find any egg to feed my hunger! 🙁

#3 – Easter egg must be on screens/features shown in Video

Backtracking to words by Matt, I started video again N-th time, this time exploring screens/features highlighted in Video. If easter egg is present in video, then it must be one of screen shown in video where we can discover it!

Again, I couldn’t find anything after struggling a lot with post-editor, new centralize update option, custom menu, custom background, etc stuff shown in video. I do believe that easter egg must not be in any theme related file/feature. As themes, even default twenty ten theme, cannot be considered to be part of WordPress core.

Finally I have found something… But it must be a bug!

While exploring Dashboard >> update submenu options, I became curious about old way of upgrading plugin.

I jumped to Plugins menu. On page, where all plugins are listed, I noticed a new entry in drop-down menu called “upgrade”. I clicked on that “upgrade” option, without selecting any plugin from list and contradictory to my expectation, I was redirected to upgrade process!

See following screenshots for details…

Clicking "Upgrade" without selecting any plugin from list
Upgrade Plugin Process ran without a plugin name

Why this doesn’t seem to be an easter egg?

As bulk upgrade option is introduced in WordPress 3.0, to me it seems a validation bug.

When you select other options like activate/deactivate/delete, without selecting a plugin from list, nothing happens. I guess with newly introduced upgrade option, this check is missing.

Also, if you look at previous easter egg which pops-up on self-comparison, this bug looks too simple to be assumed as easter egg.

I believe, the easter egg must be more whacky and stylish in nature! 😉

By the way, if you find easter egg yourself, please let us know!

7 Comments

Saeed Shahab June 19, 2010

I found one easter egg. Not sure though. I made a post on it. Here it is http://digiden.org/wordpress-3-easter-eggs/

Rahul Bansal June 19, 2010

@Saeed
Nice attempt.
But its old feature! 🙂

Saeed Shahab June 19, 2010

Are you sure it’s old? I checked the core files of WP2.x versions and never found a code matching to this as in WP3. Also google search returned no results for the “shake it” code.
I wasn’t sure either. I found it by accident, though. I’d played with the feature for about 4 hours and thought it was unique.

Ashfame June 19, 2010

The shaking of login feature wasn’t there in WP 2.9.2
It has been introduced in WP 3.0 only.
And regarding it to be called as an easter egg, I am not sure.

Rahul Bansal June 19, 2010

@Saeed & Ashfame
I was wrong by saying that it was present in old version.
Actually I am using wordpress 3.0 for development from long time. So I missed boundary between 2.9.2 and 3.0 in this case.