April 1, 2008

On April Fools' Day 2008, the background colors on MetaFilter slowly changed from their normal colors to radically different colors while people read any page on the site. The change was very slow, it took several minutes before you could even tell that something odd was going on. Some JavaScript that slightly incremented and changed the background color did the trick. You can read members' reactions in the two MetaTalk threads from that day: nice trick and Taste the rainbow!.

Want to relive the magic? MetaFilter members can click the following link to start or stop the color shift across all MetaFilter sites:

Start April Fools' Day 2008

Once you click the link the background colors will start changing. To turn off the color change, visit this page and click the link again. Sorry, this is only available to logged-in members.