Subscribe by EmailA Hidden Gem in HTML
September 1, 2009 by Miss Cellania | 27 comments
I don’t know how one goes about finding these things, but someone noticed a weird source code for this page. It’s a very basic, unspectacular catalog page for Fujinon Binoculars. But take a look at the source code.
This screenshot is but a tiny part of the madness. Keep scrolling down the code for the full effect. I’ll wait. Apparently, the designer cares very deeply about the 8 point font. It was funny enough to get posted to b3ta and even made the weekly newsletter. Lots of folks laughed at it because it seemed so pointless. But that’s just the beginning of the story.
This turned out to be about so much more than the 8 point font. If you take the entire source code and lay it on its side, you get this.
Which doesn’t mean anything in itself, but take a look at the Google Earth view from Fujinon’s headquarters as you look toward Mount Fuji, as posted to b3ta.
And then overlay the source code (seen in yellow here) onto the image.
Just a bit of an “ooga-booga” moment, huh? But it makes plenty of sense in the Japanese “form over function” mindset. A website has to have the proper Feng Shui after all. When you take all day to make sure one stroke of your calligraphy is right, why not go the distance for your html as well?
[via b3ta]
- Contraception Explained in HTML
- Songsincode: Popular Songs Written in Computer Code
- Does the human brain have hidden super-powers?
- How to prevent docs with hidden data from leaving your outbox
Completely, unquestionably, irretrievably mindblowing. Now I’m starting to wonder about crop circles!
300k worth of HTML in any page, let alone a splash page, goes against everything I believe in with regard to web design, but…that’s kinda neat.
It’s a cute “easter egg” and I’m sure a lot of work and inspiration was put into it but I think its just totally unnecessary. If this was done with software, I would be outraged (well maybe outraged is bit strong). My point is that if everybody starts doing these kinds of things, we’re gonna end up with ASCII art on code, which might be pretty but it would certainly be slower.
I wonder what made the person who found this HTML source code go to such efforts checking it out! I’ve looked at source code from other sites trying to figure out just how they did something I’m not familiar with, but never thought to look at it in this kind of perspective!
if i had a dime for every “ooga-booga” moment i had while painstakingly looking at every website page that i visit’s source code, i would be a rich rich man. :P
Re. code: Definitely a fan of server side compression :)
Anyone noticed that the outlines on the horizon in the two images are not the same?
A new mointain appears to the right of Mt Fuji on the overlay image.
And even with this one, there are only 4 ‘bumps’ matching to the horizon. The rest on the left and right side does not match.
So it’s overinterpreted randomness to me.
ehh,
thats fun.
But its not valid w3c code.
This isn’t going to end well for the feng shui
i think they will loose some spirit due to that
Feng Shui isn’t Japanese
This is madness, but i love it. This kind of dedication and love for there work that they would work so hard at something that would probably never be seen. I never thought that Feng Shui would be applied to Web coding. Wonders never cease.
That is insane, truly incredibly. Enough kudos to the developer.
Feng shui? Japanese?
Yeah, all those Asians are the same, right?
Excuse me. I’ll also try to remember not to mention a French person who had spaghetti for lunch, or a Canadian who knows Tai Kwon Do.
You can be assured that I can tell these two Asians apart. http://www.misscellania.com/about-miss-c/
lets try that again….
I think I may have the real culprit
META NAME=”generator” CONTENT=”Web Studio, Version 4.0 for Windows”
Feng Shui is chinese you idiot.
Feng Shu is Chinese.
Putting the whole Japanese/Chinese debate aside, when’s the last time you saw a Japanese site with a good sense of Feng Shui (or the Japanese equivalent)?
Here’s Rakuten a huge pile of text yet Japan’s largest online shopping site:
http://www.rakuten.co.jp
Then there’s Kakaku, Japan’s “MySimon”:
http://kakaku.com
Even Yahoo Japan has no sense of Feng Shui:
http://www.yahoo.co.jp
It’s clear that Japan’s traditional sense of aesthetic, while still practiced in food preparation, has been lost in the digital world.
Leave the overreaching connections to “Japanese culture” to those who actually know something about it.
It really doesnt match the picture at all, except for the main mountain peak o_O – not amazing at all, when you think about it; It really just looks like bad WYSIWYG output
Html can be coded with or without any line feeds. Thus it is possible to form any graphic representation of code using a text formatter.
Bottom line is the whole thing is construed, fabricated and photoshopped.
How the bloody hell did they find out about that?!?!?
Very WIred, but cool thanks for pointing it out :p
Nice find.
It would probably be easier to see, if you turned the 3d building off in google earth.
After living in Japan for some time now, this really doesn’t surprise me at all. Very funny though.
First of all it’s not valid html, second it doesn’t display correctly in mozilla, if you’re going to go to all that effort, at least code it right :-)
Also, I like the bit “If you take the entire source code and lay it on its side” – why, why would anyone think to do that, certainly if you didn’t write it?!?!
It’s like finding out for the first time you’re good at duck herding and taking it up for a living, why would you think to give it a try???
http://www.corporateentertainment.net/duck_herding.html
More duck herding. http://www.misscellania.com/miss-cellania/2010/1/8/duck-herding.html
Well, never under estimated the insanity of others…
Now I won’t be able to stop thinking how many things are hidden in pages.